Revealed: Yuja Wang wore a heart monitor in Rachmaninoff marathon
OrchestrasOn January 28 last year at Carnegie Hall, Yuja Wang played four Rachmaninoff concertos and the Paganini Rhpapsody with the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall.
For non-scientific purposes, she and the conductor wore a heartbeat monitor throughout the concert.
You can see the results in this pumped-up Carnegie Hall video.
Can anyone point to where, in that outfit, she is wearing the wire?
Carnegie Hall’s mission is to present extraordinary music and musicians on the three stages of this legendary hall, to bring the transformative power of music to the widest possible audience, to provide visionary education programs, and to foster the future of music through the cultivation of new works, artists, and audiences.
There’s a wearable device on her wrist. Unbelievably impressive she went through with this idea. fantastic and informative video, too
I caught the Fitbit looking device the second I looked at the picture. BTW I know what a medical heart monitor looks like as I’ve had to wear one. So I never noticed one under her typically flashy outfit!
For something that is supposed to be so technical, how is it that Rach 2 is shown as longer than Rach 3?
Heart broken by classical music’s latest star maestro hoopla which is a paradigm of the art world’s commercialized hollowness. Happily, I’m sure she’ll get over it.
William, I am with you about all the nonsensical hype. All of which was easy to forget when I heard Yuja and Yannick in Philadelphia perform Rachmaninov’s first two concertos and the rhapsody. I don’t even remember whether Yuja changed dresses once or twice, maybe because I was busy listening, and my eyes were often not dry.
When it’s all show-biz it’s all show!! (and salesmanship+ commercialisation) ps I sang at Carnegie Hall shortly before the restoration in the late 70s.
The video shows that the heart monitor is on her wrist. The conductor, several orchestra members, and a few audience members also wore these monitors. Didn’t Karajan get wired up with EKG apparatus as an experiment?
She wears it nearly all time. Most likely she has also some kind of athletic workouts to stay in good shape.
Guess I’m naive or antiquated. I thought that, where musical performances are concerned, it was the AUDIENCE’s collective heartbeat that constituted the standard for success.
Then, of course, there’s the scientific issue that, when Yuja walks out on stage dressed as Yuja usually dresses, some heartbeats in the audience may be immediately affected before the music even begins, so that it’s not really a “controlled experiment” measuring the impact of the music alone. But then I suppose Yuja isn’t, either. Such is the nature of her artistry-plus-showmanship fascination.
Her playing was stupendous and the “Philadelphia Sound” cultivated by YNS in the strings certainly had my heartbeat increasing.
I, as well.
Yannick hasn’t cultivated anything except totally unwarranted hype.
May I suggest listening?
Their data show that musicians’ heart rate correlates to emotions (volume, musical climaxes, etc) and not activity (number of notes, speed of passages).
And neither of their hear rates reach their target bpm sustained for the physical activity to count as a good work-out.
So there goes that facile analogy that musicians throw around all the time that they are athletes. They are highly trained to be highly precise with their fingers, or lips, or vocal chords, but they are just jogging in terms of the intensity of their physical activity.
Not (good) conductors, I promise you.
It was a marathon concert.
There are a lot of unknown underfunded, high level international pianists in the world that can play a four even more gorgeous than Yuja.
Unfortunately, they lack concert managers. Who promote freak shows
I thought this was rather fun.
Next time, the humoral responses should be measured.
Yujast don’t know what she’s gonna do next!
Heart monitoring is much easier than it used to be, and can easily be hidden under eveningwear suitable for concerts. A thin strip that communicates with outside devices can be adhered to one’s chest and no one need ever know.
Ads blocked the video at the beginning, but then the main point later was very interesting, that the emotions caused a rise in beats per minute. Maybe cardiologists should play exciting music instead of making people run on a treadmill. Beautiful and ambitious concert.
Would have been nice to know the point of the monitor. All it says is “non-scientific reasons.” Is she ill? Heartbroken from ending it with Klaus?
This was from before the “ending with Klaus”
I for one am becoming very tired of hearing about her. Take away her endless gimmicks, and she really isn’t very interesting. Other than being a first-tier publicity whore, of course, she is a terrific pianist. I suppose classical music is desperate at this point to create interest, create a stir. And I suppose there are many people out there who are fascinated that she wore a heart monitor … A HEART MONITOR!!! WOW!!! What an achievement!!! …zzzzzzzzzzz…
Amen!
What a breakthrough!
The researchers have confirmed Aristotle.
What do we know about the effect of music-induced goosebumps on our physical and mental health?
The headline doesn’t say that the conductor, musicians and some audience members also wore heart monitors for this experiment. If pushed to guess before the experiment I would guess that hers was relatively calm most of the time compared to other performers as she is so used to the concertos and it feels comfortable for her.
She is just incredible. I have been a fan for almost 10yrs since the first time I heard her play Rachmaninoff’s 3rd.