The New York Times has gone into one of its periodic convulsions of political correctness over the Carnegie Hall show of Iggudesman & Joo, and their willing straight guy Yuja Wang.
Their concert with Ms. Wang was riddled with jokes about her sexual appeal and Chinese heritage that ranged from unpleasant (“God, she’s so hot”) to offensive. (“It smells of sweet and sour chicken,” Mr. Igudesman said of a box with Ms. Wang inside.)
Yuja made it clear in a statement that she knows exactly what she’s up to.
But the Times persists: The concept, whatever its good intentions, tempts comparisons with the history of African-American performers in blackface, acting out stereotypes of themselves for predominantly white audiences. It also risks feeding the common perception of Asian-Americans as perpetual foreigners…
Friends have notified us of the death last night of Ami Maayani, former head of the Israeli Composers’ League, founder of the national youth orchestra and a vastly influential teacher.
His work is based on a fusion of many Middle Eastern musical streams.
photo: Boosey&Hawkes
Madgeburg’s new production of Verdi’s Otello failed to open last night.
Aldo Di Toro (Otello) and Raffaela Lintl (Desdemona) both called in sick and the small town had no substitutes.
Karen Stone, the theatre’s director, put on Bohème instead.
A BR documentary on Daniel Barenboim follows him to Buenos Aires, where he tries to gain access to one of his childhood haunts, the home of the Rosenthals where he played at parties.
I think I’m safe in saying there is no satisfactory performance of this troubling work on record. Lorin Maazel undertook it for DG with minimal conductorial intervention, Michael Gielen released a live — and fairly lithe — radio recording and Riccardo Chailly broached it with the Concertgebouw in the early 1990s, which is as good as it got until now but not close enough for me to the heart of the Zemlinsky enigma….
