Yannick paints his nails
OrchestrasIn case you haven’t seen enough this week of the Met and Philadelphia music director in his varied working outfits, here’s a picture he has posted of himself at perfect rest.
His fingernails are immaculate.
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This is simply absurd and also pathetic, as the other commenter wrote. Who can take this individual seriously, more preoccupied as he is with nail polish, tasteless outfits, self-promotion and agenda-push than with what he gets paid to do: music making?
I’m “the other commenter”. It was the “news item” that I called “perfectly pathetic”, not the nails of a conductor which are absolutely nobody’s business. That some people still talk about something like this in 2023 AD, that’s what’s pathetic.
But that Nezet who is posting, otherwise nobody would talk about it .
How ignorant and narrow minded you must be to think that a musician can JUST care about music. Get a life.
Who cares? There are real musical issues in the world.
I find this fascinating- of real interest to the music world. More of Yannick’s fashion style please- one cannot get enough quite frankly!
You can’t be serious. This is news now? A conductor painting his fingernails? I would call it stigmatizing if it weren’t so perfectly pathetic.
Just another mincing, giggling, fruit-flavored narcissist.
But what about Yannick?
Well thank you for your insight and confirmation that Slipped Disc is a happy place for homophobia, white supremacists and other ne’er do wells.
Yannick, is a gay, white guy….so I get your point about homophobia. But I don’t follow the white supremacy part. So is the post demeaning him or exalting him?
You’ll see the white supremacy anytime there’s a post mentioning hip hop or rap.
I don’t really recall any posts about rap on here but if criticizing rap makes one a white supremacist…..wow, that’s a pretty low bar. I would say by that metric that that would even makes lots of black people white supremacists. In my case I think rap is horrible but lots of jazz and rhythm and blues are great. What does that make me?
Homophobia here surely – and implicit in Lebrecht’s post too. As someone who has played in orchestras I can recognise an excellent conductor. Yannick is one.
Then why doesn’t he stick to that instead of all the ‘cosmetics’?
Why are they mutually exclusive? Please take logic 101 course
“Fruit”? Really? For a gay conductor? Congratulations. You get First Prize in the Dog Whistle Competition.
Liberace sued for libel (and won) a British newspaper columnist who descruibed him as “fruit-flavoured”.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberace_v_Daily_Mirror
Soy Boy. The world is full of them now!! It actually isn’t good for classical music for the world to think it’s all full of soys. Bring back Kleiber!!
Oh. I put on some Kleiber recordings and let the “modern” (but already outdated) world slowly disappear.
Yes, you will all disappear.
Painted nails…! Sodom and Gomorrah is nigh indeed!
The world does change however, even Slipped disc will understand that, sooner or later.
Be prepared for more gay and lesbian conductors, trans conductors and conducting drag queens of all colours.
Peter,
I have been used to gay conductors since the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Jeffrey Tate, and that was 50-60 years ago. Is there something I have missed?
I don’t care what people do in their private lives; it’s of zero interest to me. But please live your professional lives to the highest standard; that’s good for everybody and demonstrates AT LEAST SOME shared values. That’s why orchestras dress up; it’s not about them individually, but about the ensemble and the music.
I feel the same. A great conductor and a gorgeous and sexy man. We miss you, Carlos.
I’m more concerned that he likes cats.
Is this buildup to telling us all about the jewelry in his nether regions?
This site will one day be an anthropological study of old, socially conservative men attempting to understand a world that has changed around them where the younger generation likes to wear flamboyant clothing and most perplexingly, they do not hero worship dead white men composers and conductors.
It’s all cyclical. Let’s see who is remembered and for what.
This smacks very much of ‘if you don’t like my values I’ve got another set I can show you’.
What’s wrong with dead white male composers? Are they worse than dead black female composers (for instance)?
Are female dead composers more worthy than male dead composers?
So many existential questions your generation wants to tackle. (lol)
Freaks are in.
He’s not a freak; not in the least. Merely a vain-glorious narcissist. The modern world is full of these types. The question we could now ask is, “why are you any better or different from the rest?”
Who cares?
I guess Norman has to drive traffic somehow. I see he took the cable news approach – put anything at all on the site, just keep PUMPING OUT THAT “NEWS.”
A trainwreck in the making before our very eyes.
Somehow I can’t imagine Ormandy, Muti, Sawallisch, Eschenbach or even Stokowski doing this. Not a good look.
There is a famous photo of Stokowski dressed as a woman next to Hofmann dressed as a child at a party. Does that count in the imagination of doing this?
Yes. Something else for De Santis to get freaked out about. Would love to have seen him interviewed by Dame Edna Everage………
Can’t scream or ‘bully’ (what the hell IS that?), can’t wink at musicians (watch out Muti!), can’t speak negatively about musicians, can’t pass judgement on musicians or their playing….can’t, can’t, can’t offend, harass, bully, intimidate, discriminate……….
This WILL affect music-making, all these EDICTS from on high, based on grievance. If you don’t think so you’re not paying attention.
For god’s sake, what’s going to happen when the Chinese come knocking at your door with several aircraft carries and missiles?!! They’ll not be interested in your self-protectionist cocoons. Right now they perceive a decadent and effete American culture ripe for the picking. And with zero fight within them!!
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Peking. Peking who? Peking, DUCK!
Just let them try. There are areas of the Bronx that will eat any invaders alive………..
One generation from Ormandy to this puerile dimwit. That’s all it takes, folks, to gut long-built institutional capital.
Does his website have a gallery of studio photographs like Klaus Makela? Klaus bombed with the Berliner Philharmoniker recently.
Presumably this is headline-worthy in your world because a man has painted his nails? Time for the not-so-subtly queerphobic dinosaurs on here to get a life, starting with Norman.
Sounds like the same argument of the hippies in the ’60s. They got over themselves.
I don’t think so. Their children are running the institutions and the media right now.
And look where the 60’s got us. Those who predicted ruin have been proven correct 100 times over.
He fits in perfectly though in both Philly and New York City in terms of being woke and (now) conventionally unconventional.
I no longer do, which is one of several reasons I stopped going to Philadelphia Orchestra concerts after many years as a subscriber.
This is a generational thing, I believe. As an example, I am acquainted with a USMC veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan; he’s in his early/mid-thirties. He has black fingernail polish. I noticed but did not ask about it. Our younger generation, for better or worse, is decorating their bodies in all sorts of ways we boomers and older generations didn’t countenance….e.g., there are opera singers and other classical musicians with prominently displayed tattoos…
I work with the guy a lot. He’s always immaculately prepared, always wants to help, always positive and always doing his best. He’s a perfectly good musician, he’s no Barenboim but he has that conductor magic where he gets the orchestra on fire pretty easily, even when half the players dislike him (like in my band). Who cares about nails? Focus on what’s relevant.
He obviously cares about nails. And he wants us to see that.
Absolutely. And, in my experience, it’s rare in any orchestra where only half the players dislike the conductor………it’s like asking mice if they like the local cat.
Still, just a tad sad. “Look at me…I can dye my hair, paint my nails and wear funny costumes when I work!!” He’s not 20; not even close. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation and everything to do with maturity.
You’ve nailed it. I’m going to say it; people who have children are far more likely to mature – and more quickly – than those who don’t. And, more importantly, they grow to regard somebody else as being more important than themselves. Most of the time.
You’ve nailed it.
I thought it was news that Yannick was having the Met pay for the creation of his “costumes”; that is a case of misuse of scarce Met resources. But if Yannick wants a manicure and pays for it himself, that is entirely his business.
He can do whatever he wants so long as he is subservient to the music when he’s conducting. Perhaps he can look to Kleiber, Tennstedt et al …
He is just too twee and tacky.
Who cares? He’s a wonderful musician.
Tiredofitall nailed it indeed. Since the stupid NYT article on his garish and vulgar style of dressing, courtesy of Gelb’s own costume dept at that, and since seeing this other stupid pic of the narcissist, I have removed all YN-S recordings from my digital music library. All. Mind you, not that I truly listened much to them given the hundreds of preferable recordings by his other betters.
P.S.: About his garish and vulgar style of dressing, here is how I will describe it because this is how it all looks on him: “South-Florida-Jewish-Grandmother”.
While you had me in your first sentence, you totally lost me in your last. Some statements deserve to be called out.
Once you invoke “Jewish” as a pejorative, you’ve lost your argument. It’s this type of stereotyping–for any religion or ethnictiy–that has historically led to racism, albeit seemingly harmless in context.
It would be equally wrong to have said black, gay, or other identifier.
Trust me, there are plenty of garish and vulgar gentiles in south Florida.
Bad taste and immaturity knows know age, gender or religion. It is the great equalizer.
Sorry, autocorrect…”Bad taste and immaturity know NO age, gender or religion. It is the great equalizer.”
This is why real stars don’t do home stories.
I find the hate of YN-S perplexing here. He’s a truly great conductor in a field that is -sadly- far from crowded. All you old fogies (and I’m 69) who are lusting after the long dead Kleiber, Tennstedt, Bernstein: Get with it. Those guys aren’t coming back. Of today’s (living) mid-career conductors, name ten who are capable of conducting multiple operatic world premieres in a season, conducting three hours of Rachmaninoff in one go, easily moving from La Boheme to Parsifal with great results.
Yes, I’m a fan of YNS in much of the repertoire. He and the orchestra were wonderful in the Yuja Rachmaninoff marathon. I am 65. I still pine for the approach of the conductors you mention, all of whom I heard a lot and whose live concerts I listen to in my collection – a lot. But conducting a lot of music competently or even well won’t satisfy those of us who would really like a little more seat of the pants excitement rather than “tidy, precise renderings of the score.” Unfortunately neither orchestras nor music critics encourage the sort of blazing courage you got from Tennstedt or Munch or Stokowski……………
I don’t get the hate in some of the comments. Do I personally think nail polish looks good on men? No, I don’t, but that’s a matter of personal taste which doesn’t matter because he should absolutely wear whatever he himself likes.
When I think of other young gay conductors who are still nowadays hiding and pretending to be straight with a gf, is that better? I don’t think so. At least Yannick is authentic and deserves some credit for that in my opinion.
I have no idea whether anyone is looking at this thread still, but I just heard Yannick in Philadelphia lead by far the worst Bruckner I’ve heard in 46 years of hearing his music in concert. Depressing and infuriating that we are stuck with him. Can post a detailed report if requested.
I also paint my nails, but I conduct Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 at home better than him.