So, Yuja Wang, what do you think of conductors?

So, Yuja Wang, what do you think of conductors?

Orchestras

norman lebrecht

January 27, 2023

From an interview with David Patrick Stearns in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

‘Conductors are such good supportive people when it comes to concerto. They kind of just go with me rather than telling me what to do. I wish they could give me more ideas. But things just naturally happen in rehearsal. Yannick is so emotional, he needs more time.’

Ain’t that just so?


Cartoon from Yuja’s social media

Comments

  • HSY says:

    She said more or less the same thing about Abbado years ago (minus the “so emotional” part). I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t actually want to work with a conductor that really tried to tell her what to do.

    • Emil says:

      Indeed – and given her infamous performance with Kurt Masur where he yelled at her to slow in the middle of a performance (https://youtu.be/2GGx8TRWFVA at 1:45), one can understand why.

      • nun says:

        Karajan, faced with an 18 year old Evgeny Kissin chomping at the bits in the Tchaikovsky, simply held firm his orchestra at the tempo he wanted, the soloist had no choice but to slow down.

        But then again, it was Berlin under Karajan, they would’ve changed to a different concerto in the middle of the performance if Karajan asked them to, lol.

        Not sure the Verbier student orchestra would’ve been as disciplined and might’ve gone off the rails, half the orchestra following Masur, half the orchestra following Wang, sometimes a verbal instruction is the best solution.

        • Emil says:

          Agreeing it out in rehearsal would have been the best solution. Second best would have been following the soloist without creating a scene.

        • Pedro says:

          I was at three performances of Tchaikovsky 1with Karajan and Kissin and they were splendid. No other conductor will ever match this.

        • Michael in Europe says:

          Actually Kissing was 17, I think, when he played Tchai with HvK.

      • Larry W says:

        At 5:08 she asks “Why won’t you follow me?”

      • Sue Sonata Form says:

        One day Yuja is going to smash her head on something with that over-the-top bow she takes, as though she was trying to get rid of her own head.

        I’m utterly bored by this pianist.

      • PG Vienna says:

        She is brilliant in this concerto and Masur is unfortunately pretty old.

      • Steve Smith says:

        As the former voice of the NY Philharmonic said, Masur was a “towering mediocrity.” Masur could suck the life out of anything.

    • nun says:

      She didn’t say she would actually follow them, she just wanted them to give her “more ideas”; her next interview might well be, “conductors have such bad ideas”, ha ha.

  • MacroV says:

    There’s a great interview on the DCH with Guy Braunstein when he played the Brahms Concerto with the Berlin Phil (around 2010). He talked about how a couple years earlier he’d gone to Milan to play it with Barenboim at La Scala. Came a couple days early and he and Barenboim worked over it for several days, Barenboim suggesting new fingerings, etc., basically getting him to rethink his approach to a piece he’d played around 250 times already.

  • Had Enough says:

    If she needs ideas then she’s a piano player rather than an artist. Often to me her playing is just the notes wrapped up in her visual and sensual personna. What happens to her career when the dew falls from the Lily?

  • Petros Linardos says:

    Good artists play off each other. For good artists, indeed for good professionals of any kind, learning is a lifelong task.

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