New stretching exercises for solo pianists
NewsKhatia Buniatishvili is in Geneva this week and has a new photoshoot to show.
She’d like you to know.
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Apparently she’s preparing for a recital of tone clusters.
“Whether I’m playing a Beethoven bagatelle in Los Angeles or the Prokofiev Third in Prague, my hair has to shine as brightly as my Steinway. That’s why I use. . . .”
Sure, Norman, sex sells…or at least intrigues and compels. It works both ways here, though, doesn’t it? If Slipped Disc’s obsession with Yuja Wang and Khatia Buniatishvili is meant to critique the way their particular sensualities have been utilized by their marketers to create buzz, then a question arises: what’s the difference between their quest for clicks, and SD’s?
In fact, both Wang and Buniatishvili are compelling musicians and artists whose considerable appeal derives almost entirely from how they play, not how they look. The same can be said about several superb young male artists whose movie star good looks have been thoroughly packaged – most recently including Daniil Trifonov, Jan Lisieski, and the Jussens.
None of these compares at all the the opposite case, in which sexiness is all certain performers have going for them, and who therefore push it to a far greater degree than anyone mentioned above. Softly pornographic scenarios like this one of Lola Astanova performing ‘Clair de lune’ by way of Victoria’s Secret (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f4BUnt3i1I) inhabit a different planet than anything Buniatishvili has ever done, including this soulful account (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxcHoICbJlM).
Works for me:)
Trifonov played with us just after winning the Tchaikovsky (and just before he became really expensive). He is one funny-looking dude. He can play the piano, though.
I will say about Buniatishivili — I tried my usual method of opening a video in a different tab and going on about my usual business with headphones on, not watching the video but listening to it. She kept me listening the whole way through (it was a Schubert Impromptu, as I recall: not virtuosic, but you have to be a musician or it turns into background music).
I tried the same thing with a Lola video — some grandiose Russian piece, Rachmaninov I think. I stopped noticing there was music playing: the silence startled me a little when the piece ended, but it was like when your refrigerator stops humming and you realize you’d become accustomed to the noise.
I listened to much of Kovacevich’s 80th birthday recital the same way. He kept distracting me, lol — I’d have to stop what I was doing and listen, or take the video back and listen again. Most inconvenient 🙂
When one prostitute a beauty, she/he betray the soul – Why you consider be called an artist? It was on the earth one most beautiful man, a pianist, who didn’t followed the contemporary trend playing all kind of music and contemporary music too – after he was gone, he still an Artist and will be forever.
I’ll have what he’s having.
On the other hand, sexy pictures don’t turn a good artist into a bad one.
I thought piano exercises involve mostly the hands and fingers therein??
I can tell you first hand that she’s a genuinely nice person in public. She also has never hidden the fact that she ALSO takes an interest in clothing and modeling. I guess that has set her up as a target for those who think she doesn’t take her classical piano side seriously enough. Too bad those discussions can’t stay focused on her musical results only.
This website has criticized numerous albums for being sexual but the photo accompanying this “story” is just that.
Wasnt that their point?
What is not to like in that picture?
When I first saw the photo that accompanies this article I thought “well of course she can play the piano well; she has two sets of elbows.”
Thanks to these comments I now realize that was an optical illusion.
Here we go again. Compared to many pop and country performers, she is still a model of dignity. Some of them might as well be working a street corner. Only they wouldn’t be allowed there long. She still is focused on the music, and has the talent, and is within boundaries of classiness. Find something else to obsess on. Here’s something: which is greater, Beethoven’s A Minor Quartet, Op. 132, or Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet. Go.
Death, as a listener.
At least she’s keeping in shape!
Khatia flaunts her assets, and if I didn’t already love her playing, I might for some reason care. Exactly what kind of persona would you prefer she project? Because that’s what a persona is. Pianist personas of the past were Old World, and lovely in context, but context is up for grabs now.
If ever one needed proof of Lebrecht’s heterosexual bias…
One can walk and chew gum at the same time. Khatia’s wardrobe is part of her personality, as is her talent, and her being quite the well-read conversationalist in interviews.