Saturday, February 14, 2026
8:00 PM
Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to lead the BSO for the first time since 2012 with the highly anticipated American premiere of his own Horn Concerto, a BSO co-commission composed for Stefan Dohr, principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic. The concerto draws on material from Anton Bruckner’s soaring, brass-friendly Symphony No. 4, Romantic.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Stefan Dohr, horn
Luigi BOCCHERINI & Luciano BERIO Ritirata notturna di Madrid
Esa-Pekka SALONEN Horn Concerto (American premiere; BSO co-commission)
Anton BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4, Romantic
Learn more about the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2025-2026 season on their site.
In a wide-ranging interview, Esa-Pekka Salonen describes the twists and turns of composing a concerto for the instrument he played as a young musician, the BSO's unexpected role in shaping his first impressions of orchestral music, his goals for the 2026 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, and what he learned from the late architect Frank Gehry. To listen, use the player above, and read the transcript below.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):
Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Esa-Pekka Salonen, here in Boston for a terrific concert that includes your own Horn Concerto, Esa-Pekka. So, thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.
Esa-Pekka Salonen Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Brian McCreath Let's talk about this Horn Concerto because it seems, from what I can gather reading your own words about it, it seems like it's a very personal piece to you because you yourself were a horn player early in your life. So, tell me, when you wrote this piece, was there something that you were able to do that you hadn't done before beyond simply dropping in some fun hints of horn repertoire and the technical aspects of the horn? What musically were you able to that maybe you hadn t really tried before?
Esa-Pekka Salonen The process of writing a horn concerto was fundamentally very different from all my previous concertos for several reasons. Partly of course because of my background as a horn player, but also, for me, the horn as an instrument is so somehow linked to the great German Romantic tradition that it felt almost impossible to lift it out of that framework completely. And when I started sketching it, I nearly panicked after a while because everything that came to my mind was a memory of something. A memory of some horn pieces I played as a student or in my youth or some horn parts in the big repertoire and so on. And I had dinner with my friend and colleague Magnus Lindberg, a Finnish composer, very well known. And I said, I don't think I can do this. I think I have to cancel because all I can think of is all this stream of consciousness of an ex-horn player. And he said, you know what, don't worry, just let it happen to you. And embrace all of it. And start writing etudes and variations on all these snippets, and finally you end up with something that is actually your own music. And then he had a very good metaphor. He said it's almost like a face that you can see in a very dark room that you know there's a face, you know the face has some familiar features, but you don't know who it is. And that got me going. So, indeed, I created a lot of completely new material, of course, but also, there are allusions to lots of horn things, and some of them go by so quickly that only a horn player can spot them. But it felt very, very personal and quite difficult in the beginning.
Brian McCreath That's fascinating because, actually, I think that a lot of the references that you describe do happen so quickly that, as a piece of music, it doesn't sound referential to other things really so much at all. It just sounds really beautifully conceived and a beautiful concept of a concerto. So, I think you ascended beyond all these memories and maybe ghosts even that were in your imagination.
Esa-Pekka Salonen Well, of course, it's a tall order to, say, embed a quotation from the "Eroica" Symphony into my own harmony. So it's a funny moment. It's like, sorry, Ludwig, but this is what I'm going to do. [laughs] So, it's like tinkering with the greatest things on earth. But still, that was the only way I could write this piece. And now, thinking back to that composition period, I actually had a lot of fun also. It was not only painful and difficult. It was also quite nice to be dwelling in some distant memories and, you know, moments when, in my childhood, I became aware of the world of the horn and the German tradition it belonged to and so on. So, all in all, it was a rewarding experience.
Brian McCreath Speaking of rewarding experiences, I was astonished to learn that, as you write in your notes for the Horn Concerto, that Bruckner's Fourth Symphony was what you conducted for your diploma concert at the age of 21. And here we are with Brucker Four on this concert. So, if you could be the teacher of your 21-year-old self, who was about to do this diploma concert, what would you tell them about Bruckener Four that maybe you've come to understand over these last many years?
Esa-Pekka Salonen My road into Bruckner Four is actually linked to the BSO, in a funny way, because I was about 10 years old, I think, thereabouts, I'm not absolutely sure, and my dad had just bought his very first stereo system ever. I came back from school, and he hadn't mounted it yet. The loudspeakers were on the floor, and the receiver, and the amplifier, and so on. And I started tinkering with it. And I managed to connect the cables, and I was trying to find a radio station. In all honesty, I was trying to find the rock station, I think. But then all of a sudden, I found the classical music station. And Bruckner Four was playing. I think I came in, like, halfway through the Scherzo or something. And I thought it was absolutely astonishing, the sound and the majesty and the unbelievable energy that we don't often connect with Bruckner's music, but there's so much energy and rhythmic, like, kinetic energy. And I waited until the end of the piece, and I learned that it was the Fourth Symphony by Bruckner. And I went to my mom and said, can you buy a recording of this? I would like to have one. And she did. And that was an old Erich Leinsdorf recording of Bruckner Four with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, from the, I don't know, 70s, late 60s.
Brian McCreath The 60s for sure, yeah.
Esa-Pekka Salonen Most likely 60s, and the horn player was the legendary James Stagliano...
Brian McCreath Stagliano, yeah.
Esa-Pekka Salonen ...who was the First Horn of the Boston Symphony for years. And I played that record until it basically disintegrated. But that was my road into Bruckner, and in a broader sense also, it was one of the most important moments, when I realized that I actually want to do this as a profession later on in life. And I thought, if it can be this wonderful, that's all I want to do in my life. So obviously, if one is 10 or 11, it takes a while until you actually know for sure. But I think this symphony was one of the impulses.
And then to do it in my diploma concert...
Brian McCreath This was at the Sibelius Academy?
Esa-Pekka Salonen …at the Sibelius Academy, and my teacher was the now legendary Jorma Panula, who has taught every Finnish conductor pretty much, but also lots of other conductors in the last decades and so on. And he asked, what were my thoughts about the repertoire, and I said, so, Bruckner Four. And he was like, whoa, whoa. [laughs] Okay, there we go. And I said so do you think it's a bad idea? He said, well, you know, no, if you can handle it, fine.
Brian McCreath Well, I wondered, in Panula's classes, how many people would take on a work like this for their diploma concert. I mean, I don't know what it was like to be studying at the Sibelius Academy.
Esa-Pekka Salonen Some people thought I was just crazy. Some people thought, well, you know, it's a piece, and there's printed music to it, so why not? And obviously I don't remember how I approached the piece. I have no memory of that. I remember that there was a fantastic party afterwards, that I do remember. And so basically positive memories.
But, by and large, for every conductor, the challenge in Bruckner is to find a balance between the majesty and the grand vistas and the flow, because it's very easy to be sidetracked in this music. And if you stop to sniff all the flowers along the road, it actually falls apart, and that's not what this music is about. So, you have to find a balance there. And also, some of the transitions are completely unintuitive. By this I mean, like, how he goes from one thing to another, especially in the last movement. And usually, his finale movements have this kind of challenge, that he does one block of stuff and then stops, goes onto the next one, goes onto next one and there's no bridge. You have to kind of solve these challenges in one way or another. But of course, now my current self can look back to all these performances of Bruckner's symphonies I've done over the years and how many different solutions I've tried over the years. And that's also fun. It keeps you kind of inspired because there's a constant challenge, and there are no permanent answers to these questions. So, to come back to a symphony like Bruckner Four is inspiring also in the sense that I might try a new thing.
Brian McCreath That's great, that's fantastic. Let's talk a little bit about Tanglewood. You're doing a lot at Tanglewood, so we won't get to everything, but tell me about the Boston Symphony program you're conducting, which is the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and Sibelius Seven, and then the “Emperor” Concerto [by Beethoven] with Fima, Yefim Bronfman on the second half. These are three very different pieces, but tell me about the program and how there is something that puts these pieces together in one evening.
Esa-Pekka Salonen It's just three great pieces.
Brian McCreath Okay, that's fair, too.
Esa-Pekka Salonen And the soloist is one of the great pianists of our time and a very, very good friend of mine, Fima Bronfman. So, I thought, why not? Of course, the Sibelius 7th Symphony has a surprising Wagnerian element to it. It's not so much on the material level, but more like the vibe. You know, the expression goes very much in the direction of, say, Parsifal. And the very long extended chorale in the beginning and all these big arcs and all that. And I thought that Tristan Vorspiel would be a nice pair to Sibelius Seven because, having heard Tristan - I think it was in either Berlin or Munich, he went to hear some opera when he was planning to write his own opera, and there was a libretto already, and it was supposed to be an adaptation of the Kalevala, the Finnish national story about the creation of the boat as an idea, like the first ever boat. So, he was ready to start. He went to Germany, heard Tristan, and, I think, Lohengrin, and wrote to his fiancé, Aino, and said, opera, not for me. [laughs] So he was just scared. I can imagine that for composers, the young composers of that period, like the late 19th century, Wagner must have been an absolutely colossal figure. And somehow to have the guts to go into the same field as the Grandmaster must have been a really scary thing. So, he gave up on opera, and he never wrote one. So, in a way, in Wagner and Sibelius, there's a connection that is kind of a little bizarre.
Brian McCreath That's interesting, that's fantastic. I didn't know that story. That's amazing.
You're also the Director of the Festival of Contemporary Music, which is a huge project every summer at the Tanglewood Music Center. And again, without going blow by blow through every concert, every piece, there are several concerts over about five days, I'm curious about what this opportunity would mean for you when you were asked, would you take on this role. What's your first thought about how you even begin to organize a set of five days of concerts that are going to be different kinds of ensembles in different locations? What was your goal for what you wanted to find when the Festival of Contemporary Music came around in July.
Esa-Pekka Salonen It gives me a unique perspective personally because I can plan programs that partly look back to my earlier years and to friends, colleagues, who in some cases are no longer with us, sadly, and so on. And I would be like in the middle of the timeline and also look into the future to curate programs with much younger composers, like the Next Gen, Gen-Z composers, Millennial composers and so on. And I like the sense of continuity. That's one of the greatest things about this thing that we call, somewhat uncomfortably, classical music, that we become part of this fabric that stretches all the way to, I mean, wherever we place the start of Western art music, maybe, you know, around 1200 with Pérotin and those guys, the Notre Dame School of Composers. If we say that, then that's 900 years and more. Every one of us contributes to that fabric. Some people in a major, gigantic way, like, you know, Beethoven, all those people. Some people on a smaller scale, but every one us is part of that. It's a very encouraging idea and a great consolation, especially in a world that has clearly gone off the rocker.
Brian McCreath I love the way that you put that, though. That's amazing. It brings us all into it. We're all part of this fabric of 900 years of this music.
Esa-Pekka Salonen Absolutely, and also, we can see that, because this thing has survived for such a long time there's a good chance that it will survive even the current troubles. The very idea of someone who is in their 20s writing a piece for orchestra or a large ensemble, that in itself is already a statement. That person says I believe in the future of this art form, because otherwise all this would be wasted, and I would be doing something else. So, there's a big, major implied statement. And for somebody like me who has been around for a long time and is well known and so on, the statement is somewhat different, but the content still is that, yes, we have had a great past, and I believe that there's going to be a great future for this art form. The institutions may survive, or the institutions may morph into something else, and some institutions may even go out of business, who knows. But strictly speaking, the future of music is not the same as the future of institutions. So, if an opera house finds itself in an almost hopeless financial situation, it doesn't mean that the art of opera is about to die away. We have to make that distinction. And I think music is going to be doing fine. The forms and organizational aspects of music, we don't know what's going to be there in 50 years from now, 100 years from now. But as long as our species is represented among the other animals on this planet, there will be music.
Brian McCreath Everything that you're saying does apply to the Festival of Contemporary Music, with a broad range of composers and works that you've programmed for these several concerts. But another part of your activities at Tanglewood will include a talk with the president and CEO of the Boston Symphony, Chad Smith. And since we're now talking about this, maybe I'll ask a little bit more specifically about orchestral music, the topic of your talk at Tanglewood, and whether there's anything you might be able to say right now about what you see as the biggest challenge to orchestral music. I'll put it that way because I see what you're saying that the institutions may come and go. Orchestral music, likely sticking around forever. But in the world that we have, that you've already described as pretty troubling right now, what's the biggest challenge to orchestral music in our time right now, in a way that you might put it right now?
Esa-Pekka Salonen I'm just worried that the youngest composers no longer see the symphony orchestra as a viable option, because it's a difficult equation. There are less opportunities today than, say, 20 years ago or 30 years ago. Fewer commissions. Orchestras operate under a very tight rehearsal schedule and so on. And if you're writing your first orchestral piece, it's difficult. I actually cannot imagine a young composer, no matter how talented that person would be, to be able to sort out all potential hazards beforehand and then give a perfect score to a conductor and then sit there in the 90 minutes of rehearsal they are most likely to be getting and everything would be fine and dandy. That's kind of unlikely. Because there's so many surprises, there's many things that are very difficult to predict, especially if you're dealing with your first compositions for a large ensemble. So, I'm just worried that the youngest ones would kind of turn off the orchestra as an instrument kind of idea. And I would like to be able to somehow keep it relevant for the youngest composers as well. Because you know, every day that goes by means that our distance, temporal distance from, say, Beethoven gets longer. Obviously, we don't know how the so-called relevance function works, but if we imagine relevance as like a rubber band or something, and we stretch it day by day. Surely there's a point when it snaps. And the only way to make sure that the relevance of this very old music remains is to make sure that this growth, that the whole garden is represented, or a forest, rather, that there are new plants and new trees growing, and then there are the big trunks, you know, the Bruckners and the Beethovens and the Sibeliuses and all that. And so, in order to have a healthy ecosystem, you need new music. I don't want to see the day when there's no longer new music for symphony orchestra because I think that would be a disaster. So, that's my main concern. There are lots of great young composers and still many of them write for symphony orchestra, so no imminent danger. But I'm trying to look into the future, like a few decades into the future, even longer, and to make sure that this wonderful thing we have is still vital and flourishing.
Brian McCreath That's a great reason for people to come and hear you talk at Tanglewood in the summer. I want to ask you one final thing. I sense, and I don't know, because I've spent very little time in L.A., but I have this strong sense that the relationship that you had with Frank Gehry was deeper than what a music director and architect of a concert hall might normally experience. And you wrote beautiful things after Mr. Gehry's death in December. But tell me what you learned about your art from working and being around Frank Gehry for so many years.
Esa-Pekka Salonen It's very difficult to put into words, but we had numerous, numerous conversations about music and architecture and art and so on. And of course, there's this almost like a cliché that architecture is frozen music. It's kind of valid, but there's the main difference - and this was Frank who kind of made it clear to me - that normally, it's the composer and the performers who create the timeline in music, i.e. the direction. And also, the timeline is a one-way street. You cannot go back in a live performance. And so, the composer basically is in charge of time. Whereas in a space, like an architectural space, the timeline is actually created by the observer themselves. So, their movement in that space creates that timeline, which, of course, is fundamentally different, because you can go back, which you never can in music. And that's the similarity and the major difference. But many other things... Frank was telling me about chaos, how useful chaos is and how most interesting things happen when there's order and sometimes preconceived order, and then you kind of break the order with something that comes from the sort of chaotic part of the mind. And in that zone, most interesting things happen. And he did mention Beethoven as a model. And very true, some of the most memorable moments of any music are these sudden turns in Beethoven's music when you think, okay, this is how it's going to go, and then all of a sudden it does something that completely pulls the rug. So, my years of conversations with Frank, lots of dinners, quite a bit of wine, have been some of the most important, fundamentally important, moments in my life. And I'm forever grateful.
Brian McCreath That's beautiful. Esa-Pekka Salonen, it's so good to have you back in Boston and so good that we're going to have a lot more of you at Tanglewood this summer. So, thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.
Esa-Pekka Salonen Thank you very much.