Yannick gets pinned in Paris
NewsThe Philadephia Orchestra music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin was invested last night in Paris as an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by Laurent Bayle on behalf of the Ministry of Culture.
Earlier this week, Gustavo Dudamel was granted the same honour by no less than the Président de la République.
Yannick, as usual, dressed casual for the occasion.
“dressed casual for the occasion”
First of all, he’s wearing a double breasted suit jacket, which, in and of itself, is pretty stuffy (but of course, he wears no shirt, to better show off his pecs).
Second of all, I find it odd that male classical musicians (are expected to) conform to the corporate code of jacket and tie.
Anyone can dress like a bank clerk.
The question is: why on earth would you?
Yannick will look back in decades to come and regret his fashion choices. One would have thought he would have learned from PG’s fashion faux pas.
“Hip” only comes off well in your 20s. After that, it’s just lack of taste.
You last sentence is the saddest sentence I’ve ever read of the vision of man once he hit 30.
If you really feel that way, my God, you are indeed your name, Tiredofitall.
Unlike Peter Pan, the majority of “people” grow up.
Or those who dress like bank clerks have long passed the stage when going shirtless seemed to be a necessity for their artistic or intellectual development?
He wore a double-breasted jacket with a pullover shirt. But no, he — nor most of non-fiddling humanity these days — did not sport a tie. Neither did the chap pinning him; but hey, you got in your dig, so no matter … 🙁
“he dressed casual for the occasion”. Now I understand why you call him Yannick.
Narcissist perfectly represents his generation. Surprised he didn’t wear stands of pearls. They’re so “in” now with the the cool kids desperate for attention in Hollywood. Honestly feel his performances are a giant bore.
You don’t know where to begin. At best this is the musical equivalent of Barack Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize for literally showing up, and at worst it’s an endorsement of all the current dishonesty of the profession. At his tender age, Yannick has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING extraordinary — I repeat, NOTHING extraordinary — in the service of French music: I’m sorry, is there a Boulez cycle for DG I didn’t know about? Along with some very underwhelming performances of “Carmen” and a particularly leaden “Faust” at the Met, YNS has basically just spent his globe-trotting career doing the usual boatload of Daphnis-et-Chloes, Mother Gooses, La Mers and Fantastiques, with the Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov cycles that are nowadays the wheelhouse of every single white-European superstar conductor, with the occasional contemporary piece thrown in for good measure — and in his case, the symphonies of Florence Price (which is very laudable, but has nothing to do with anything French). And then, as usual with Yannick, there’s the whole high-class-hustler getup: the snug black suit with no shirt, and the gold chains, like he’s channeling Brigitte Bardot at Cannes in ’56. A lot of us greeted his appointment in Philly all those years ago with enthusiasm, but YNS really has just become the ultimate example of the rotting core of this business: an overpaid, overrated, over-engaged white male European conductor in America (Quebec for many reasons being functionally Europe), whose genius PR team has somehow managed to portray him as BIPOC and Woke, when he’s actually just the primary symbol of an elite group of people, consolidating their money and power. And to think that Ella Fitzgerald — Ella Fitzgerald — had to work her whole life, in order to get this honor; if YNS had any class whatsoever, he would have very politely refused it, doing a very subtle rebuke to Dudamel and saying, “Thank you, but give me this in twenty years, when I’ve actually done something for France.” At least Dudamel actually has responsibilities there.
Bravo!
His Verdi Requiem at the Met was a disaster. Vacuous, graceless and boring. But, predictably, the NY press loved it.
After Dudamel, an other cocktail party on the Titanic. Refreshing. Probably no one listened to the horrendous Beethoven symphony set, a bleak and empty machine from someone who has obviously nothing to say.
Such profound intelligence in his grin. And there is something that reminds me of the scene where Young Frankenstein is making love to his assistant, to be interrupted by Frau Bluecher who informs him that his wife is forthcoming. “I think you’d better wear a tie”.
What I learned from reading this site:
1. There are raving cliques of Yannick haters, Muti haters, Thielemann haters, Dudamel haters, Barenboim haters, women conductor haters….
2. And they all gather on this site.
And without them, a good number of these conductors wouldn’t have any publicity at all. They should write the haters checks.