What to look at when Yuja Wang performs
NewsFrom a new Guardian agony article titled ‘Fashion, fabrics and fishtails – why we need to talk about what female classical performers wear’
… Perhaps part of the issue is that fashion lies outside the traditional classical critic’s toolkit. “That’s right, I’ve turned into a fashion critic,” wrote Norman Lebrecht, who described Wang’s outfit as “a micro-dress cut an inch below the butt.” But this sexualised account couldn’t be further from fashion criticism. It tells us nothing about the dress beyond its length. What were the fabrics? Style? Who was the designer? How did the dress choice interact with the musical programme? The language and skills to address these questions might need to become part of the modern critic’s toolkit – and if critics start taking fashion seriously, agents might be able to include outfit details in press releases without fear that it will open the floodgates to derogatory commentary about the artists they represent.
The inability to talk about Wang’s clothing in a sensitive and respectful way reveals damaging and longstanding assumptions around women and their dress on the classical stage. The notion that what we see might “distract from” music, rather than shape our experience of it, stems from a centuries-old division of body and mind, physicality and rationality, that claims classical music as purely cerebral stuff. The body has no place here. And this idea is gendered. Rationality and the mind have historically been coded masculine, sensuality and the body feminine, with the result that women and their bodies have been marginalised within classical music. It’s no coincidence that Hoffmann used “he” as the default for his imagined musician….
This narrative needs to change, not least because either sexualising or ignoring women’s clothing diminishes their agency as artists. Wang’s clothing has been dismissed as a triviality, an unconsidered marketing ploy with dresses picked purely for whether or not they “show more leg”. And to do so, Wang has been painted as a naive, lost individual who has “had neither time nor guidance to acquire perspective”, and is consequently being used “as tinsel” by more experienced, expert (male) musicians.
The denial of Wang’s agency also feeds into racist stereotypes around the submissiveness and inexpressiveness of both women and classical musicians of Asian descent – stereotypes that Wang’s clothing choices actively disrupt….
Read on here.
This is obviously a hard topic. Artists have freedom to choose costume when they perform. It helps if the chosen costume somehow echoes what they play. The examples in the Guardian piece are not the same. Dr. Ege’ Africa themed dresses are well-thought/tasteful and matches the music she plays that night. Yuja Wang’ costumes are just randomly chosen beach clothes.
Interesting how much the image of Michael Bojesen on this very same page does fit to the expectations the 60+ have of the dressing of a ‘serious’ classical musician.
https://slippedisc.com/2022/04/swedish-opera-fires-serial-alleged-molester/
Isn’t it ironic …
Actually she is right. In your original article you wanted to turn a diva into an old, unsexy savant, something like a 90-year-old Faust (or Glenn Gould).
How on earth have you music journalists not gotten bored with this topic already…! Imagine 20 years into the future her (new) fans want to know what she’s like when she’s younger and all they could find are stupid discourses on her clothes…I can already see the vitriol that’s going to be poured on these journalists and critics.
I think we think too much.
I actually finished the article… all the way to the end to see if I could find something important. Nothing. Is he being paid by the word?
Yuja Wang’s clothing is unsensitive and disrespectful, thus it poses some dificulties if you are supposed to talk about it in a sensitive and respectful way. It would be interesting to listen to her and Vanessa Mae (not sure about the spelling) playing the Kreutzer Sonate.
Yuja Wang is one of the best contemporary pianists in the World and of one does not like the way she dresses then one can listen to her recordings or close their eyes. The only reason the average Classical musician is dressed like a waiter is because historically they used to be servants in Court. Yuja is free to be the person she wants to be.
Yuja Wang is surely one of the best pianists now-a-days in her share of the repertoire. No doubt about it. However, her “dress code” is disgusting for a classical musician. No doubt about it too. It feels almost like “Regitheater” in opera – things like Tristan and Isolde singing a love-hate duet in the first act with peolpe copuating eller defecating in the bakground.
Sorry about the typos.
The typos are the best bit.
“Yuja is free to be the person she wants to be.”
You don’t know what nonsense you are writing. What you are calling for is anarchy (Yuja can do what she wants).
and arbitrariness. According to this view, YW does not have to abide by any rules, certainly not the rules of respect and social decency.
Addendum: not ”listen to, but ‘see’.
My standpoint: Assuming her clothes are ought to be talked about, talk of neither her butt nor the designer, and be brief wether you lament or praise them. I really want the music. And I wish that the dresses she likes would have aligned with the dresses no one points out, but now it is not so.
The “agony” of the agony article is from reading it….
Am I the only one who cares more about how she plays than how she looks?
Everyone should be paying more attention to her artistry and less to her “arse!”
Typical of The Guardian!! Also, Yuja Wang hides in plain sight in her livery.
Well, I love Yuga Wang and I love the clothes she wears. She comes as a gorgeous brilliant musician both in performance and looks. There might, just might, be grounds for criticizing her if she could only play a melody over two chords in a bar. However, let’s not overlook that there are other female soloists whose cut of their cloth and flowing hair are just as appealing. I suppose next in line for silly criticism is Khatia Buniatishvili with her low cut top which would not suit Yuja, with her characteristic deep bow to the audience, lest something fall out.
Robin is a name people of either sex are given, but you managing to force in a mention of breasts strongly suggests your gender.
“The denial of Wang’s agency also feeds into racist stereotypes…” Can we get a break from race baiting? Please? Pretty please?
I appreciate your original article was for The Critic which is aimed at a particularly reactionary audience but surely in the third decade of the 21st century an artist can wear whatever they feel good in?
Interesting attempt to bring music down from its own sphere to relate it to the reality of the performer’s body. The text is filled to the brim with ignorance and misunderstanding. Just one thing is worthwhile to pick-out: the idea that the music is gendered masculine and the body, in case it is related to sensuality, as gendered feminine. This is supposed to be the result of a historic split:
‘The notion that what we see might “distract from” music, rather than shape our experience of it, stems from a centuries-old division of body and mind, physicality and rationality, that claims classical music as purely cerebral stuff. The body has no place here.’
Music is human experience translated into sound, into a musical space where experience is stylized, its essence filtered out of its original reality, and thus made accessible to people living in another time, at another place, another culture. Classical music is non-conceptual in the sense that it is about the ‘how’, not the ‘what’ of experience. So, the music is filled to the brim with emotional experience without literal hang-ups, and the range of types of experience goes from eerily cerebral to disturbingly carnal, and everything in between.
In other words: classical music has loads of sensuality in it to be experienced, but in a stylized way, so that it is accessible to anybody with enough perceptive abilities. In again other words: there is enough ‘body’ in the music to make it a very real emotional experience. No physical appearance can match musical sensuality, and because of the direct accessibility of musical bodily presence, any literal, physical attention drawing is merely distracting from the heart of the performance wich is its musical content and meaning.
So, performers should NOT draw attention to their own bodily presence because there is already more than enough bodily presence in the music to be experienced. If short skirts, inviting cleavages and sensational hairdo’s have to add some sort of bodily presence, the justified suspicion is that there is not enough of it in the playing.
Common sense, once again, from Mr Borstlap. How refreshing.
So by your logic presumably any particularly attractive performers should have bad hair cuts and wear unfashionable spectacles so as not to uglify themselves so we’re not distracted?
Indeed….! And as we see, many performers do their best to serve the music in this way.
Except that in this case, there is plenty in the playing! Yuja is mostly larfing at rigid old bores who can’t listen beyond the visual effect – the horrible hi-heels and disproportionate dresses. Unfartunately “bodily presence” cuts both ways; my favorit pinist was a gruesomely ghastly hideous old horror to regard, (children fled…), but if you listened past the visual…….
This “suspicion” may only be “justified” before she starts playing. After that there is nothing to suspect – just listen and, if you are so inclined, form your opinion about what you are hearing.
I would enjoy the music while she plays, and the looks before and after. If I were to read anything related to theconcert, it would be about the music.
Lebrecht is right. Se is an outstanding pianist, but her (beautiful) nude skin is distracting.
Maybe educate yourself on how to not sexualise women because of their choice of clothing then, Phillip.
She is sexualizing herself.
It is not only the choice of clothes. Se clearly thinks it is funny to see audiences reaction when she gets almost naked. The smile on her face looking at people staring her reveals everything.
Once, it was winter, and at a cold theater in my city, she changed her clothes for the second part of the program, to use something like a black bathsuit. It was so cold that she stood up and went to backstage to take a fur coat …
Daily reminder that a woman wearing what she wants doesn’t mean she’s sexualising herself! Please for the love of God show some self control Phillip.
Only if you let it be distracting.
Beauty can also be stimulating. How about all those beautiful women in movies? There is no shortage of beautiful female actresses, some of whom are or were supreme artists. Does their radiance get in the way of appreciating a play or a movie?
(I am sure others might make a similar argument about good looking men.)
But that is an entirely wrong argument. In the movies, visuals are a fundamental part of the thing. In music, that is not the case.
By the way, the ‘beauty’ of personages in movies gives a distorted view of reality of life, and is a mere means to draw as many people as possible to the cinemas.
To appreciate a musical performance, obviously the looks are irrelevant. Nevertheless, personally I don’t mind if a female performer looks attractive to me. I rather enjoy it. Yet this is peripheral to the musical experience, and never a distraction.
Indeed, it should be a mere bonus and not a distraction. But when performers want to draw attention to their outfits, on purpose (for whatever reason), they do a disservice to the music they are supposed to serve.
I fully agree with your point on outfits. When it comes to Yuja, I would enjoy her physical beauty but not her outfits.
“The inability to talk about Wang’s clothing in a sensitive and respectful way reveals damaging and longstanding assumptions around women and their dress on the classical stage.”
Her clothing is disrespectful.
Such behaviour may reveal a damaged individual.
Voilà, a comment disrespectful to women, revealing a damaged (deranged..?) individual, unable to control himself….
Who is the woke moron that wrote crap? Probably a transgender who identifies female. Wang’s clothing is a marketing tool that indeed distracts from her performance. Who gives a flying….what fabric is used? If she thinks being eye candy gets her more gigs, so be it. Lee Broad(perfect name, btw)should close her/his/it’s eyes and listen.
May I ask why you’ve decided to use transgenderism as a weapon here when it has absolutely nothing to do with it?
Secondly, if her clothes are distracting you, then you might need to teach yourself how to not lure at women’s bodies. Or can you not concentrate on the music when a pretty girl is playing? Sort yourself out mate, learn some basic control.
I actually like the masks we have to wear. I get an extra thick one that can absorb all the drool when I lure at women.
Nobody is “sexualising” Ms Wang. She is free to wear whatever she feels comfortable playing in. I am certain that if a man showed up to perform a concerto wearing a bathing suit, Mr Lebrecht would also make mention of it.
Norman has been sexualising her for years, as have other older, sexist men in the industry. The Guardian article is saying that she SHOULD be comfortable to wear whatever she wants, without creepy dudes leering at her.
… or a mankini.
Oh, give up the corduroy jacket with elbow patches, Norman. Liszt’s recitals would have baffled you too, perhaps.
There is ample historic evidence that Liszt never showed more skin than was absolutely necessary, that is: on the stage.
I will let you know how it goes. Looking forward to the Ligeti.
Surely, Sir, in the context: looking forward to the Leg-iti!
(Twas worth it; just heard her in Aix-en-Provence!)
Just here for the comments from the triggered folks…
*munching popcorn*
lol
Inspirational.
Reminded me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMQ4JicUs1A
That was the best Vatican fashion show ever.
Perhaps 2 inches from her butt, Norman. I suspect you are correct.
I always thought she was Lang Lang’s counterpart with her dress the least of concerns.
She’s a pianist – so please stop talking about what she’s wearing!!! Her couture is distracting from what is most important – i.e., how good a pianist and musician she is. Her outrageous duds have nothing to do with that.
Keep the classic arts the way it is, never ever to be cheapened. I would never attend her concert even if it’s FREE.
Why the visual obsession? I just heard Yuja: Beet, Schoenberp, Ligeti, Scriabin, Albeniz, Kapustin, mostly magnificent. I loathe hi-heels, makeup and disproportionate dresses but for the music i’m willing to close my eyes. I’ve also always loathed “concert dress” – suits, tails, ties… ghastly ridiculous, uncomfartable garb, but for the music i’m willing to accept this abomination! Happily, many musicians and orchestras are varying their dress, jacketless, dark shirts, open or Chinese-style collars, etc. As long as it’s clean, smart, comfartable….and musical!
I’m always grateful to the Guardian. Their hand-wringing articles trying to undo millennia of evolution and common sense always provide me with a refreshing nap.
Look with your ears and listen with your eyes. It s not easy , but it may work.
What are the alternatives?
A nun’s habit (for Liszt) or a misogynistic burkini?
If you can’t bare seeing bare skin just shut your eyes or read the programme notes!
Actually, burkas for both sexes would do recitals a lot of good. There are some signals that this is the way piano recitals are produced in some villages in the east of Afghanistan.
Norman it’s about time you stopped obsessing over the way she looks. It’s very creepy and weird!
The clothes are irrelevant. It’s the pianism that counts. Would we happier if she turns up in her granny’s PJs?
‘Discussing clothing is something of a taboo in classical music, for performers as much as critics.’ What a stupid thing to say when everyone is spending myriad column inches discussing that very thing. Sheer hypocrisy. But then it is the Guardian!
What is interesting about Yuya Wang and certainly unsettling to her critics is that she is uncompromising in her artistry. She’s an excellent pianist and succeeds with demanding programs. She recently filled Carnegie Hall with Beethoven/Ligeti/Schönberg/Scriabin/Albeniz/Kapustin – that’s on the level of Pollini in his heyday. She doesn’t make crappy videos like Lang Lang or kitschy CDs. Are her clothes more worth talking about than the gowns of AS Mutter ?
To be fair (to the discussion, not to the musicians in question), Mutter got plenty of column inches devoted to her off-the-shoulder gowns, with much the same grumpy-obsessed reactions, just a Wang gets today. Mutter still wears off-the-shoulder, but people no longer find it distracting from her artistry. Why people can’t just close their eyes if they find the musician’s clothes to be distracting, I have no idea. Using eyelids can be helpful to focus on the music…
These articles are always written about women, yet, the male soloists and conductors long ago dropped wearing tails and their attire ranges from the flamboyant to the casual, they post pictures of their workout routines on their social media in a transparent attempt to show off their bodies, and nobody says a word when they completely let their bodies go.
Males wearing swimsuits on stage would, no doubt, be a women`s rights issue.
Interesting, how expensive couture can be so cheap. That is how the pianist looks.
A rare instance of my having essentially no view at all on the subject. Very glad to have read the article, though: (a) because of the anecdote about Ruth Gipps and (b) because of the link to her obituary. What an amazing woman!
Oh dear. She who allegedly plays piano provokes by appearing half naked and now sanctimonious woke people find the critic‘s reference to her attire as disrespectful? Get a life, children.
As a famous philosopher once said: “As ye show, so shall they peep.“
Commenting on Ms. Wang’s dresses is sexist if there is no comment on her hair style, shoes, walk, nail polish, etc.
Why not comment on the way she puts together her program, or the bad interior design choices of the theatre, where e.g. a glossy black piano never fits the wooden stage?
It is because when I look at her “hair style, shoes, walk, nail polishk” I do not see her buttocks. When I look at her dress, I can see them …
She is in that very large part of “classical” music which bifurcated into showbiz 30 (?) or so years ago. As in any kind of showbiz, there has to be an enticing image, it must be very visual, with glitter, butts, heels and whatnot. That specific kind of showbiz implies fast moving fingers, that’s it. I listened to YW live once, it confirmed what I implied and that was my last one. I personally find it utterly disrespectful for the genre. There still remains the real classical music part, a much smaller one, and it seems that the classical musicians that remain in that group are men or women who do not go down the “cleavage-butt-nude body-stilettos” marketing hole. It is a much smaller group now, of course.
No one complained about Tina Turner’s legs or arse.
Why does our industry complain about Ms Wang when she flaunts the physical gifts she has along with her wonderful musicianship.
As I have said many times before, we desperately need sex appeal in our industry especially when it’s backed by great artistry and great repertoire.
What is not to be like here?
People don’t matter about pop artists nudity on stage because de audience of this kind of music is already drown in an ocean of vulgarity.
Ms. Wang was in fact interviewed years ago on the subject of her clothing choices. She stated that to her, it was a matter of mood. She’s given many performances dressed in beautiful full-length gowns, but no mention of this in this testosterone-filled comments section. One must learn to look beyond an artist’s choice of dress to the substance of their performance.
to thing how Eileen Joyice was vilified for changing attire during reitals !
A lot of rubbish pretend to be sensible arguements, it seems to me.
First of all, is she forced to wear those dress or she is free to choose? What‘s the problem if she decided to do so? Second, as a came-out homosexual, is it relevant for her at all how you old men think of her legs? (Not that she will be interested in you guys even she is straight!) Third, I am an Eastern Asian; what submissive stereotype this article is talking about? The most submissive traditional Asian woman wrap herself all over!
This isn’t new, “in the last 30 years”, or just women- Liszt made the ladies (and numerous men no doubt) faint just by walking into a room or on stage. More power to her!
When she appears on stage and walks to the piano, I obviously notice the way she looks which often is very attractive, but sometimes not so much. The moment she starts playing, her appearance does not matter for me anymore because my full attention is on the musical sounds she produces, and most of the time her playing sounds outstanding to me.
I think the dress should not detract from the performance, whether male or female. Unfortunately it often does.
Is this from ‘The Onion’?