Temirkanov was misogynist? Watch him with Yuja
OrchestrasA Telegraph obituary claimed in its headline that Yuri Temirkanov was a misogynist who disrespected women musicians.
Utter nonsense to all who knew him.
Watch him at work here six years ago in St Petersburg with Yuja Wang in the first Shostakovich concerto, a work he understood better than any living conductor.
The respect is unmistakable.
I wish I could like at least one of her interpretations — video, audio, double blind test, whatever.
We wish we could like any one of your comments.
I am sorry about your multiple personalities disorder.
@IP: Diarrhea of the mouth is caused by constipation of the brain.
ah, so easy and self-satisfying to be an anonymous critic in the comfort of one’s easy chair …
Do you think that my opinion would be better if I were listening in the armchair of inquiries?
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftorturemuseum.net%2Fwp-content%2Fgrand-media%2Fimage%2F_DIF3560_01-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b98ea928ecf0cc91c387a79e13775e71b2365009c257afaa23e4448f44ee562b&ipo=images
For a better interpretation of Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, I recommend Dokschizer:
https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=Xk7hoGuX2Kg
I agree but he was the (legendary) trumpet player and teacher of Nakariakov, not the pianist — in this case that is one Solodovnik, and the conductor is Sondeckis (I think Lithuanian).
Notes are there with indecent facility… about spirit , mix of irony, sharp humor, first and second degree, vulgarity and beauty , Temirkanov gets it, Yuja I don’t know….I give her more credit than Lang Lang but like IP, I am never convinced…
The Telegraph would like us to believe that a man of remarkable achievement should only be remembered for the unforgivable sin of wrong think. But the obituary writer and the Telegraph have only succeeded in discrediting themselves.
From 2016 on Slipped Disc:
“Yuri Temirkanov: I don’t Like Women Conductors”
https://slippedisc.com/2016/03/yuri-temirkanov-i-dont-like-watching-women-conductors/
It may or may not be misogyny but it’s certainly sexist. Let’s face it, one can admire the guy’s legacy and still recognize his faults.
He may have meant he didn’t like the female conductors he saw and/or knew. Who knows? It’s petty to make an issue of it in the first place.
So apparently you didn’t know him (or read his interviews)?
Lucky for Yuja that she isn’t a conductor, as Temirkanov openly stated in interviews that women conducting is against nature because all females are simply too weak and too beautiful to look at for musicians ever to focus on the music.
He was an elderly man whose comments were made in a foreign language and taken out of context.
Proof???My russian wife translated the interview for me. In Russian, it´s even more explicit.
him being “elderly”, speaking a “foreign language” and his words being “taken out of context” are all separate claims that have nothing to do with the justification of his sexist “preferences”. It’s akin to saying “People can be black, I just don’t like it when they are”. No amount of context/language barrier can excuse this as not being biased. He was certainly capable of performing with other female artists, martha argerich included. He had great qualities, and bad ones, like all of us. It is entirely possible to recognize both.
You are obviously a member of the Thought Police; a vile group of brigands who are happy to enact the increasingly neurotic forms of Left wing therapy politics. With aggression and consequences for failure to comply, ignore, prefer reality the truth – whatever sin of commission or omission.
No wonder we have wars.
Could not agree more! Interesting how the character assassination begins AFTER he dies. Where were all the haters when he was alive? They had decades to take him to task but said nothing.
I said it’s possible to recognize both good and bad qualities. How is this “left wing therapy politics”? I would consider this a basic attitude of respect and fairness. In fact, wars come about from extreme reductive views, so I would argue that it is rather your view that is dangerous here.
Well said David!
His disdain for women conductors goes back well before 2016 when he wasn’t an “elderly man” and the context of the interviews were specifically about women.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/women-gays-and-classical-music
This is a dumb hill to die on.
This fantastic world thinks its ideas should be the ones of the last 10000 years and 10000 years to come. Sorry guys, they didn’t and they won’t. Where are your classics…”vérité en-deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au-delà” said Pascal ( a truth on one side of Pyrenees mountains = France, is taken as a mistake beyond= Spain). Everything so relative, Norman is right to remind it. Don’t make our present so embarrassing and short sighted…..
That sounds more like what Vasily Petrenko said.
Yes, in a Guardian interview: Male conductors are better for orchestras, says Vasily Petrenko
Musicians are distracted by ‘cute girl on a podium
Maybe just give it a rest? It’s such a cliché of living today. In an age where perfection is as elusive as ever we must all live our lives with a constant eye towards our own precise correctness. Maybe a bit of ‘he who is without fault should cast the first stone’ would go well here and everywhere else in the world right now!
I played under Temirkanov a few times – he seemed a decent, caring human being to me and he got the job done.
Agree! Yes, give it a rest.
I sung as a soloist under his conducting, and can only find words of praise and admiration towards the musician AND the human being. Period.
Ha ha, oh right, like you can detect misogynism by looking at a concert filmed for broadcast.
It’d be like combing through the thousands of John Eliot Gardiner videos on youtube and then concluding: See? Not a single instance of him slapping any singer! Gardiner does not have a temper problem!!
There’s a name for this behavior. It’s called “confirmation bias.” AKA “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
The Telegraph obit was a disgrace, worthy of BBC Radio 4 or some other deluded organ.
Masterclass: https://youtu.be/ypBsoqMxMBw?feature=shared
He’s working with the girl. Definitely the same way he did with boys.
Musician: A true pro. I have seen Prof.Jorma Panula training female conductors the last 30 years. Utterly professionally, treating students of both sexes exactly the same encouraging, demanding and friendly way.
If he doesn’t like female conductors, that’s his private matter. He doesn’t like milk products either.
That doesn’t mean he hates them.
Yura, Maris Jansons and now obviously also Vasily Petrenko don’t/didn’t like female conductors either.
“Yes, women can be conductors. I am not against them conducting. But I simply don’t like it. There are women boxing and weightlifting; they can do that. But I don’t like watching. It is only my taste. We all have different tastes. For example, I don’t eat fish.”
For a thought experiment, imagine if he said he doesn’t like seeing Jews or Blacks conduct? Why do we brush aside such statements about women?
Isn’t the first violinist of the Dover also misogynist? Someone correct me if I am not but I heard he says he has a problem when he sees women more successful than him. I was just at a concert where I overheard another audience say he is not a nice colleague. And my colleague just told me he voted for trump. of course, another trump supporter.
oh, I saw him perform a few times this year with the Candlelight Quartet! Is that his second quartet he performs with? The MC there said he plays in two quartets. The repertoire was non classical Anime music and Taylor Swift so I thought he was working two jobs to make ends meet. Tough times.
Your TDS is showing.
This is far from the truth as he is one of the most hard working, honest, generous and committed person I know. Not to also mention his character is his most cherished quality. He is an amazing human being who is always thinking about giving back to the world. These people that you call “colleagues” are also wrong as I can probably easily come up with hundreds of actual colleagues who will say that he IS in fact a nice colleague and easy to work with. And no, this is not him writing, this is coming from someone who has known him on many different levels and has witnessed his kindness a lot.
He also supported Putin at one time, but we won’t hold that against him.
That clip proves nothing either way.
I mean, if you have to endure the textile abominations of the Chinese woman and her unculture of provocative nudity as a professional musician, you can only become misogynistic.
If that’s “nudity” to you, you clearly haven’t been watching many pop singers perform in modern times. Yuja is positively conservative by Western cultural standards.
Karin: Utterly despicable comment. Too much flesh for the moral inquisition?
I’ve read that obituary and it’s a disgusting piece of writing from someone stunted and mean-spirited enough to besmirch the achievements of one of the last century’s greatest conductors with petty identity politics.
There’s a lot of growing up to be done in many quarters.
Temirkanov was the great Russian conductor of his time. His years with the Baltimore Symphony were glorious. He rehearsed with profound attention to balances, accuracy, and established his interpretations thoroughly, authoritatively and ultimately collaboratively in his rehearsals. On the podium he was a dignified, alert leader at concerts, with expressive arms and hands and alert cuing eyes, and was the welcome antithesis to the narcissistic nonsense displayed by a now too-well remembered American conductor and all his younger sycophantic imitators. Прощай, великий, незабываемый Маэстро, Юрий Темирканов!
If only politically incorrect YT kept his opinions about the visuals of a female conducting to himself and followed this great advice from LB (to close his eyes when a woman is conducting) – that could save him a lot of aggravation AND earn a better obituary…:-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvfkGwSNubQ
The clip proves nothing one way or another. Not the best performance from Yuja with score and a ghastly brittle HammerYa and a rather destabilose trumpeter.