It’s not just about the music: Alex Ross reviews Yuja Wang
NewsThe New Yorker critic goes to town on a Los Angeles piano recital.
… a number of people find themselves distracted. “She’d fit much better in a night club” is one of the politer complaints to be found on Wang’s Facebook page. Ironically, such concern trolling is symptomatic of the very superficiality that it purports to condemn. If you hold music to be a pure, transcendent, anti-physical medium, your attention shouldn’t be meandering to a player’s physique. Fortunately, most audiences recognize that Wang’s fashions are an honest extension of her personality. At a recent recital at Disney Hall, in Los Angeles, each of her ensembles elicited giggly applause. (She customarily changes at intermission, as opera singers do.) What would happen if a male pianist chose to highlight his body in a similar way? Some boundaries have yet to be tested.
The flamboyance ends when Wang begins to play. At the keyboard, she is precise, dynamic, purposeful, unsentimental. Although she has drawn attention for a marathon survey of Rachmaninoff’s five concertante pieces for piano and orchestra, sultry Romantic repertory isn’t her strongest suit. Some of her most memorable performances have been of thornier fare: Schoenberg’s Suite, Opus 25; Bartók’s First Piano Concerto; Messiaen’s “Turangalîla” Symphony; Ligeti’s Études; John Adams’s “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” It’s seldom noticed how she uses her star power to lead audiences outside their comfort zones. She’s a modernist in fashionista gear….
Read on here.
A wonderful musician. Her looks are a bonus.
“The flamboyance ends when Wang begins to play. At the keyboard, she is precise, dynamic, purposeful, unsentimental.”
Oh, really? Does it end? Is she able to handle emotionality?
Are you usually impressed or moved by her playing?
Has she ever played a lyrical piece?
There is the issue – not unrelated to her (un)dressing. A responsible adult should have had a talk with her.
Remember, you don’t have to look or listen.
I liked her Rachmaninoff 2nd, that is the one under Gergiev/Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, available on Youtube.
A coincidence or not, but she also happened to wear a dress that evening.
All other garments happened to be in the washing machine.
There is a beautiful performance on her latest CD of a Brahms Intermezzo. It’s a lyrical piece and she plays it extremely lyrically.
I remain convinced that fashion never was a conscious effort of her “marketing strategy” until Amanda Ameer blew up a throwaway comment from Mark Swed and backed her into a corner. If she stopped wearing short dresses it would amount to an admission that they *had been* a marketing strategy until she got called out. This was in 2011, when she already played an opening concert at the Lucerne Festival with Abbado, had a recording contract with DG, was widely known in the piano world, and was repeatedly invited to play at prestigious venues. It’s true she likes to wear short dresses; it’s true critics commented on them here and there; it’s true Swed’s review was in bad taste. But it was Ameer who turned such isolated comments into a journalistic phenomenon. Ameer, being Salonen’s publicist, was universally read by American critics, and her widely discussed article (see below) was seen as an OK signal to include as much incel vibes as one likes even in the “respectable” publications, and that is exactly what they did. Even the good reviews would leave people with an unmistakable impression that “Yuja played well for someone that dresses like a wh*re. But that’s the critic being generous and polite to a woman because he doesn’t want to be accused of sexism.” Janet Malcolm’s profile on her didn’t help, though given Malcolm’s specialty I give her the benefit of the doubt. At this point descriptions of what she wears have become wholly obligatory and knowing Yuja’s personality I wouldn’t be surprised if she chose some of her outfits just to poke at the critics and see what fresh stupidity they were going to produce.
In case it’s not clear yet—describe them if you must but please stop making her dresses into a thing. They really aren’t that relevant.
https://archive.ph/zZm2d
Another of the bossy crew that instructs the rest of how we are allowed to think and feel.
Oh, stop. Going onto a classical concert stage with most of your Birthday Suit on view, as this performer certainly has on many occasions, is designed and intended to draw attention, notice, gazes, and reactions, and it is disingenuous and outright dishonest to claim otherwise or to play self-righteous when that occurs. Of course it was all about shrewd marketing, self-conceived or otherwise–all one has to do is view photos from the pre-Birthday Suit era to see that.
Having said that, Ross is right on the money about none of it mattering at the end of the day when it comes to Wang’s fabulous modernist taste in repertoire and her galvanizing execution.
“all one has to do is view photos from the pre-Birthday Suit era to see that” She does not have a “pre-Birthday Suit” era. (And what a disgusting phrase from you.) She has always worn both short and long dresses. Go watch her Scriabin from Santa Fe on youtube and see what she was wearing. What turned the pre and into the post is that Amanda Ameer (with Salonen’s implicit backing) justified and normalized the misogynist tone of Swed’s review and made it a standard feature for future reviews of her concerts.
The dress that started it was worn on a hot summer day at the open air Hollywood Bowl. Swed was a critic in LA of all places. I don’t know what he was complaining about. We have no idea if Yuja’s dresses would have gotten shorter if Ameer didn’t tell everyone to stare and laugh at them. (Yuja certainly wasn’t going to back down.)
I was at that Hollywood Bowl concert. The mostly rich, old booze-fueled men hooting and whistling, sitting in the fancy box seats, contributed to a sense of strip-club vulgarity. The in-house, overhead camera, designed for keyboard hand movements, was unintentionally, almost picking-up, um other shots, shown on jumbo-screens. It’s almost what the late Jayne Mansfield or Edie Williams would have done, in the retro-past, if they could play the piano as brilliantly as Wang. That’s the rub: all this talk is a distraction from her true, unquestionable talent.
Before she invested in a stylist nobody would have looked twice at her regardless of what her fingers could do on the keys. That is a fact, deplorable though that fact is regarding the brutally competitive bigtime classical concert circuit.
And the stylist or stylists she invested in did make flashing much of her Birthday suit part of the “look” at least a hefty percentage of the time.
Did you not read my post? She had already played the opening concert at the Lucerne Festival at that point! With Abbado! In those years it was one of the biggest events of the year! And she was already invited repeatedly to the top places! No matter how brutal the big time the classical concert circuit is she was already at the top. Where is your evidence that she “invested in a stylist” rather than picked the outfit herself?
Classical concerts are not for listening but for watching and quarrelling.
Sally
Yes. They either wrote like incels, or they completely ignored her, and that’s what Alex Ross has been doing in the last decade. I guess Salonen finally told Ross to rehabilitate Wang’s image because now he wants to play concerts with her, and that is why we suddenly got this article. It wouldn’t do for our Polar award-winning KBE and torch-bearer of modern music to be seen as associating with what the “intelligent” music-going public (i.e., those who read about music in periodicals) perceives to be a dippy woman chiefly known for what she wears, would it? In any case Wang’s talent has been apparent since 2009 and we don’t need a Levine-apologist to tell us the obvious in 2024.
“Ironically, such concern trolling is symptomatic of the very superficiality that it purports to condemn. If you hold music to be a pure, transcendent, anti-physical medium, your attention shouldn’t be meandering to a player’s physique.”
I really have a problem with the above comment. I don’t agree with the following one, either:
“The notion that performers should be faceless butlers of genius, impersonally conveying sublime messages in sound, has no basis in tradition.”
Audience members LOOK at us performers when we perform live. A concert is not a CD, is it? When we walk on stage, our clothing is the very first thing that people see – and they have to watch us throughout the performance – for weal, or for woe.
I am afraid that I must debate what Mr Ross says. I was trained not to draw negative or prurient attention to myself in any way on stage, in order that the audience should not be distracted from concentrating on the music. That was the longstanding twentieth-century recital performance tradition. The training for females and males entering the profession, in the early ’90s, was to dress smartly and modestly, and to play to the best of our ability, in service of the music, and in order to realise the composer’s vision.
If audience members of both sexes say that they are distracted by Ms Wang’s clothing, then they should not be told that they are wrong – or be accused of superficiality – because that will not change the facts. They are speaking the truth: that they are distracted or appalled (or both) – and that they find her attire not in accord with classical music tradition, as they have experienced it throughout their lives. They are entitled to feel that way. After all, most of them were probably sitting in concerts before she was born.
Likewise, the fact that some male pianists were extravagantly dressed, in the past, suggests nothing other than the likelihood that there will always be someone, in every generation, whose natural style is flamboyance.
Ms Wang is presumably unmoved by the fact that some/many audience members feel distracted by her attire; or that her clothing is the primary talking point about her (in itself an artistic failure, because her playing ability should be the principal topic under discussion, not her hemlines). Most professionals do not share that insouciance.
Each to his or her own, I daresay… As a former oboe soloist, I prefer the traditional approach to live performance. Do you regard me and my Gen X colleagues (and the teachers who trained us) as superficial, Mr Ross, simply because a major motivation in our on-stage clothing choices is our refusal to jeopardize audience concentration, in any way?
This is an excellent post, Althea. Perhaps not coincidentally, I am Gen X myself. And it isn’t just attire. The way certain artists comport themselves on stage can be just as distracting as sexualizing themselves. I can’t stand watching Trifonov, for instance, and the ridiculous faces he makes, even though I think he’s a superb musician. At any rate, there’s something inherently fraudulent to banking on one’s physical attributes to “seduce” an audience. Can you imagine, say, Clara Haskil dressing as Wang does? Now, THAT’S an image I can’t get out of my head.
I too prefer to see performers in conventional clothes. And yet I don’t understand why so many people today are so visually oriented. Sometimes all we need to do is watch less and listen more instead.
Many famous artists of the past had annoying mannerisms: Maurizio Pollini was too nervous and sometimes breathed very loudly; Alfred Brendel made funny facial expressions; let’s not get started about Leonard Bernstein’s histrionics. Did audiences bitterly complain about being unable to enjoy the music making of those particular artists for visual reasons?
Did Furtwängler’s funny beat drive audiences nuts?
If only more of those who dislike Yuja Wang’s clothes to just listened, there would be more joy and fewer complaints.
Yes. Wang is all business actually, walks out quickly (though Trifonov runs) sits, plays, gets on with it, quick bows, goes off. No faces, no lifting of arms during the music. Earl Wild would absolutely approve, and would approve of her virtuosity too – just because the artist makes something difficult look easy (sprezzatura) doesn’t mean she lacks “emotional depth” or “the spiritual aspect” (whatever that is)………….
I’m with you, John Kelly. She does not do histrionics while playing. One of the big bugaboos of Horowitz. One might consider the fact also that young Asian women – Chinese, Korean Japanese have all loved to dress the way Yuja Wang does when they are going out for the evening – especially to a nightclub. On my part, certainly I notice how she is dressed, but when she starts playing I just forget about it. It was brought up by a person commenting here saying she doesn’t have lyrical playing. That just isn’t true. Listen and watch her playing Prokofiev Third Concerto. Terrific. Also her Scriabin Sonatas. She is an amazing talent. Look at her on YouTube as a little girl. Already beautiful playing and musicality. BTW, I am a professional classical musician – have been for decades.
I somewhat disagree. When I go to a concert, it is for the whole experience, for the sense of occasion. If I want just to ‘concentrate on the music’ without the distraction of watching living people perform in the flesh, I can listen to a CD with my eyes closed. Conversely, if I am distracted from the music because I feel the performer is dressed inappropriately, that is to do with me, not the performer. Yuja Wang is a joy to watch as she plays, totally in disciplined service to the music. Far more distracting are the excessive body movements and facial expressions of such as Lang Lang – which adversely affect his interpretation.
A correct assessment.
Classical music is about the music, NOT about the players. The exceptions to this normal rule are always the people who consider the music they play as mere vehicles for their ego, instead of dedicating their ego and their talents to the music. Drawing superfluous attention to yourself through clothing reveals vanity and lack of understanding of the relationship between the performer and the composer. Without the performer, the music still exists. Without the music, the performer is nothing, in spite of all her/his clothing. In the precariously balanced triangle of classical music life (composer, performer, audience) it is the composer who stands at the top as the most important party. The reason? He writes the stuff without which the whole construction would not exist, he is the creator.
“Classical music is about the music, NOT about the players.” Great! Then ignore what the player is wearing! Problem solved!
You deserve at least half the blame for finding what she’s wearing to be distracting. If it was about the music, you wouldn’t notice in the first place…
I never noticed something unusual about Ms Wang’s clothing until it became an issue in the media. It was my PA who woke me up and pointed to all the flesh on the stage.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
I had the opportunity to check that myself, long after I had read about it in a philosophy book. I was taking a walk in a deserted forest on one of my German holidays, and lo and behold, an old tree came down noisily. And there was nobody around to hear it! So, yes, also in such instances it does make a sound.
Sally
But weren’t you there? Are you not some one?
To be clear, I’m trying to make a counterpoint to your argument that the composer is at the “top” of the audience-performer-composer three-way. Often, the composer isn’t even there in the (bed)room – so many of them are not among the living. So why are they on top?
Why is any one of those three on top? Is this not an equal relationship between the three?
(Went to a dance recital in LA – Benjamin Millepied – at Disney Hall with my husband and a friend. The friend walked out because he found it “too self-indulgent” whereupon he had to be reminded by my husband that dancers usually dance primarily for themselves.)
I like the Boulez quote:
“One should essentially see concerts as a means of communication, as animated contact between active participants, be they listeners or creators.”
No such attitude is entirely wrong, because based upon the lack of understanding what creation is. Performers are REcreators, composers creators. The whole music world rests upon creators, dead or alive. The Boulez quote merely shows his lack of musical understanding, as his sonic art amply demonstrated.
Creator? REcreator?
Seems like a distinction without a difference to me.
Says who?! A mere opinion given a portentousness it certainly doesn’t deserve. As a performing, albeit amateur singer, I think this obsession about what individual, let alone groups, of performers wear on stage, is total nonsense! Anyone got a convincing explanation to justify music ensembles looking as if they stepped in from the 19th century? No doubt people like you have no qualms about keeping classical music archaic and elitist … Others attuned to the 21st century beg to differ …
The 19th century saw the production of almost ALL of the regular repertoire on which the entire music world rests. The concert world as we know it now, was a 19C creation, including its traditions and rituals. Also that age was the age in which music theory was created as an academic discipline and in which state conservatories were created, the entire educational trajectory of today is the result of what was created and organised in the 19th century. It was also the age when concert halls and opera theaters all over Europe sprouted as never before.
Now it seems for some people that anything reminding us of that age, is associated with backwardness.
John, I think your argument calls for listening to music at home rather than going to a concert because in a live performance you see the instruments, some of a different shade or age, the performers, of different sizes, ethnicities, genders and ages, the mannerisms of the conductor, the nervous smile of an oboist, the steely concentration of the guy playing the clarinet solo, the pompous gesturing of the well dressed virtuoso during the cadenza, the lady three rows in front with the cough, the guy who can’t help but hum quietly in the slow movement two rows behind you, the rustling of programme notes, the good looking woman on the balcony, the really ugly old man next to her…the music is a major part of a concert but not the only part, and it never has been from the grinning Mozart, the wild unkempt Beethoven, the flamboyant Liszt, the neurotic Tchaikovsky, the wild Anton Rubinstein, the dapper Arthur Rubinstein, the corpulent Saint-Saens, the fascinating Clara Schumann, the arrogant Heifetz, the distant Brahms, the commanding Argerich…
No, all of that is mere wrapping paper. When you get a present, don’t you appreciate what is really in there? You may keep the wrapping paper as a nice souvenir but surely you would not confuse it with the present.
“What would happen if a male pianist chose to highlight his body in a similar way? Some boundaries have yet to be tested.”
While it may not count as “highlighting [their] body,” I *have* seen male artists change outfits at intermission, though I admit that changing one’s jacket and tie to those in a different colour is not exactly drastic. (Not to mention that these were usually trumpet recitals, but I digress…)
The music is primary, sure, but just as in the culinary arts, presentation counts for something, too. Yuja clearly understands this quite well. Does it grab peoples’ attention? Sure. But I doubt anyone can deny she’s got the musical goods to back it up.
“Please would you wait until I change into something more extravagant?” – Liberace
Drawing a parallel with Liberace is a very apt observation. In this regard nobody comes close to her in the top ranks of classical music.
A concert hall is NOT a restaurant. It is this idea that the music is a commodity like anything else, is one of the reasons of classical music’s decline in modern, materialistic, superficial society.
So if presentation counts for nothing…. we can just do away with concert dress codes altogether, right?
I’m so looking forward to wearing my black AC/DC t-shirt, or my blue Metallica t-shit while I cackle incessantly that the word “trombone” sounds like “bone”…..
As a trombonist, I also giggle at the shortened name “Bone.”
Heh heh… you said “bone.”
See? Can’t help myself!
What pretentiousness and snobbery! Clearly you believe all the values and attitudes of the audience should be as elitist and Dickensian as your own … Fortunately … they’re not.
Thank you for confirming my point. Classical concerts are obviously nothing for you, that’s OK, do something you derive real pleasure from.
That’s exactly it! She’s got the goods! If she didn’t, then we could raise holy hell about what she wears!
That’s exactly it! She’s got the goods! If she didn’t , then we might have the right to denigrate her concert apparel.
It’s mostly about Yuja Wang and music, quite unlike SD posts. Alex Ross devotes eight paragraphs about music, though only after the first three about appearance.
On a personal note, I look forward to listening to the great pianist in Tanglewood in less than two months. I find Ozawa Hall’s acoustics ideal for recitals. The setting is beautiful and relaxing. Admittedly seeing a attractive young woman on stage will be an added bonus I didn’t have at, say, Garrick Ohlson’s memorable Brahms cycle at the same venue two years ago. Classical music is alive and well!
Agree – it’s a bonus to have an attractive young woman on stage playing music I love (though Wang is no longer that young anymore). And sure, I’ll look at an aging guy in a rumpled tuxedo if he has something meaningful to say. But the idea that classical is above glitz and glamour is silly – Mozart, Liszt and Chopin were all performers who knew the elements of showbiz all too well.
I never understood why people would go to an event where there’s so much to see and where there’s a stage with real people on it, and then would prefer to not watch all of that. For instance, when I have to attend an opera performance I prefer to have a seat in the boxes so that I can watch the audience below. Alas, they dim the lights during the thing so that I can only enjoy the breaks.
Sally
A wonderful player and the dress controversy is reminiscent of the furore that surrounded (still does) Nigel Kennedy. I attended a concert some 30 years ago where he played the Beethoven concerto and he came on in typical rag/punk attire and fist-bumped the conductor, but as soon as the fiddle went under his chin there was total concentration. I have rarely heard an audience so silent and captivated. I can excuse any eccentric behaviour if the musicianship is superb.
Indeed, for all their antics, both artists are highly accomplished. One important difference is that while Yuja Wang is a decidedly classical artist, possibly a bit conservative as an interpreter, Nigel Kennedy is a risk taker and has ventured into crossover.
It is about the level of the audience. When, in the 19th century, public concerts were still new and audiences naive and seriously underdeveloped, Liszt made furore with antics, theatre, and distortions of the music he played, to please the simpletons in the halls, but when he played in the salons for an audience of knowledgeable listeners, he played what was in the score and entirely without antics. At the time, serious musicians did not like Liszt’s acrobatics at all, simply because it was considered superficial and fake, and beneath a serious standard.
‘level of the audience’ ‘simpletons’ ‘serious musicians’ ‘beneath a serious standard’.
Classical music isn’t for the likes of us simple folks!
Liszt was criticized by ‘serious musicians’, not for the technical brilliance and flamboyance of his playing (which was admired), but for adding unnecessary ornamental flourishes in his piano transcriptions of opera and lieder. When he played Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata, in the same salon (the Salle Erard) in which he had wowed his audiences when performed his own over-the-top transcriptions, he added nothing. There were appreciative ‘simpletons’ in that audience too!
There’s a lot of confusion in this comment, which merely shows how difficult it is to make the basic distinctions.
Mr Borstlap should re-read the important review by Berlioz of Liszt as pianist and composer, in the Revue et Gazette Musicale on 12 June 1836.
Hw does that change my point? The antics of performers was always a problem and not the main attraction of classical music.
An unfortunate parallel, I think. Yuja Wang is all gifted musician whereas ‘Nige’ struck me as 100% fake hiding his rather un-remarkable skill behind false ‘yoof’ connectedness …
What do you expect of an Aston Villa supporter…………?
She is the future of classical music. She injects energy into the music, like Muti did with the CSO. Now in Chicago we are going to be listening to music a couple of hundred years old with no energy!
Least of all about the music, if you ask me.
I can’t imagine anything more disingenuous than to pretend someone isn’t purposely sexualizing themselves to titillate an audience when it is plain as day that that is what they’re doing. It’s part and parcel for current liberal commentators to berate people for having the sense of sight to see what is plainly obvious, i.e. when we’re told “trans women are women” when it is clearly just a bloody bloke in a dress. Don’t believe your lying eyes.
All true. The reason to overlook it is not that drawing notice, attention, remarks, and gazes aren’t the purpose, or that it isn’t being done for the most cynical marketing reasons. The reason to overlook it is that regardless, she has the substantive goods when it comes to taste, repertoire choices, technique, and interpretive execution.
Literally not the point. It is what they wrote about her playing that mattered, and it is plain as day what she wears did and does affect their judgement.
Here is the deal with Yuja, she’s a brilliant performer, one of the fienst on the stage musically and technically. That said, there are a number of serious and important composers who will not, or will no longer write for her, because of the fashion parade. They want to see a review which talks about their work and her performance, before the commentary on what she wore. It is a double edge sword and some are tired of it. They have a point.
Who are these composers? What’s your source? John Adams isn’t one for sure, and, like his music or not, he’s probably the biggest around.
Two years ago Ms Wang asked me to write a short but loud and fast piece for her, but when it was finished she rejected it because the score indicated ‘fully dressed performer’. Later-on it was performed beautifully in Cairo by a lady in burka.
What critics write about is not up to Wang. They can write about the music, the performance, or the fashion. They chose to write about the fashion. If John Adams no longer wants to write for her, fine — he doesn’t need her and she doesn’t need him.
Her looks are what creates most of her publicity. Her playing is…fine, no better than any number of great pianists out there today.
For all the headlines and attention she gets, I can’t name one area of the repertoire/one composer that is her “specialty”, she basically plays everything the same.
So you think she plays the Scriabin sonata and the Beethoven sonata the same in her recent album?? Maybe get your ears checked?
I boarded a SwissAir plane and when I turned on the music channel it was a pianist, I knew not who. It was the Fantasia album as I found out. Of course none of us can fail to be impressed with her virtuosity but as I listened to this recording without knowing who it was, what impressed me the most was the depth of feeling, emotion that was being communicated. She is the present and future of music. Presently there is no one I would prefer to listen to (not see, listen) than her. She seemingly lives with the instrument and the instrument never seems to get in the way. Much respect, admiration.
I hear that she sleeps in the instrument, on the side where it is rather narrow, and have the lid on the small stick for air, and that it was this habit that struck Klaus as rather uncomfortable so that they broke-up.
Hey, if ya got it, flaunt it. But Yuja certainly doesn’t need to dress this way – her artistry is such that I would go if she wore a burlap potato sack. Now, as for that Yuja-wannabe who constantly wears a bustier that is about to spill its contents – she DOES need to dress this way, as she lacks the artistry to back it up.
Her great artistry is for music that is virtuosic, cool, and unpoetic, so: ‘outward’, indeed much suited to what many listeners happily recognize as the modern world outside.
Ross has an agenda to promote modern music, he will praise any musician who plays that stuff, beginning with his choice of whom he will review in offering up the precious real estate that are the pages of the New Yorker in the few articles he writes per year.
“sultry Romantic repertory isn’t her strongest suit. … she uses her star power to lead audiences outside their comfort zones.”
She uses her sex power to misdirect audiences from noticing her weak suit, the Romantic repertory that she takes on in marathon fashion memorable for its endurance rather than its passion.
Could it be that you and Yuga have different ideas about the music and that one idea doesn’t suit everyone?
It is difficult to name what her “strongest suit” is. But “sultry Romantic repertory” definitely isn’t her weak suit. Both her Rachmaninoff concertos and her Scriabin in her recent album are outstanding. As for her Rachmaninoff marathon, were you there? Many people present at the concert would disagree with you.
I can already see Woolfe and the rest taking up the same line: Wang is not good at the repertoire that everyone cares about and on which pianism is judged, but her fashion is good for selling tickets for the repertoire that Salonen and his composer friends want to present and no real respectable pianists want to touch. (Of course they won’t say this loud. But people will get it.). It’s nauseating and they act like we don’t notice what they are doing.
I have seen her too many times and think she’s turning into the Chinese female Liberace. Her fans would go to her concerts regardless of the program. And as for her so-called program — lots of banging around modern stuff, very fast, very soft or very loud, and very little poetry. Her Romantic repertory never moved me. I only wait for the encores. Remember Arcadi Volodos? Another ‘encore’ pianist showman from the early 2000’s.
Well, please excuse me, but thanks to my ‘male gaze’ (nowadays officially canceled…but I can’t help – and thus still my biological problem…), her looks distract me from concentrated looking to her performances.
The same, in other ways, in case of e.g. the shoes and socks of Jean Yves Thibaudet, Nigel Kennedy’s appearance, Gidon Kremer’ grimaces, etc…
Just take a look at the Jussen Bros. Mostly they appear in rather sophisticated, tailor made, fashionable suits. In perfect ‘harmony’ with their overall outstanding performances.
By the way, the looks of my wife still are a great bonus to me…
The socks of this French player gave me nightmares! I had to look at them all the time.
Sally
she‘s wearing skin-toned dresses, so she‘s not nearly as nude as it seems.
… to the great disappointment of the group of gentlemen who had made reservations in the front rows.
Salonen wants to use her to sell his concerts with pieces “out of the comfort zone”, so that is why Ross says she is good at specifically this. It’s not enough for Salonen to just take advantage of her mass appeal. Our ultra-prestigious composer-conductor has to make sure she is sanitized in the press first. And just to be safe so that she is locked into this repertoire, Ross also says “sultry Romantic repertory isn’t her strongest suit”. In doing so he also doesn’t have to contradict the prior verdicts of his colleagues that were clearly more based on her image than her playing. (What a good colleague Ross is. He always does put the interest of the collective critics first and foremost.) Ross does the same trick with the LA Phil, by the way. Dudamel is miles ahead of Salonen in the repertoire the LA Phil used to be good at before Salonen, so Dudamel and this aspect of the orchestra must never be mentioned.
Ross belongs to the breed of critics who believe that the popularity of the Great Repertoire – mainly 19C – is due to the conservatism of audiences, who are only driven to the concert hall with ONE motivation: to be calmed, reassured, at hearing the same sounds over and over again. In other words: they are dumb, stupid, reactionary. Music is there to take them out of their comfort zone, to make them feel uncomfortable, awful, threatened, to make them depressed, anxious – in short: to make them feel MODERN, to confront them with the ‘reality’ of ‘the modern world’. Hence the need for Xenakis, Haas, etc. etc. It all stems from a dedain towards ‘the bourgeoisie’ – classical music, in this view, is the product of the bourgeois class and necessarily reflects its narrow-mindedness. The patronizing arrogance combined with ignorance makes such viewpoint much suited to the people who become critics. Or composers like Boulez.
The incredible idiocy of such position is breathtaking and merely reveals a fundamental lack of musicality.
But it was not always so. In his ‘The rest is noise’ Ross is criticizing modernist ideology and breaks a lance for non-modernist 20C composers like Sibelius, Vaughan-Williams, etc.
Music is there to take them out of their comfort zone – I’m sure Beethoven would have agreed wholeheartedly. Maybe even J.S. Bach. How comfortable does the St Matthew Passion make you feel?
This is the entirely nonsensical modernist ideology, music as a disruptive force. Wrong….. no composer of any stature had the motivation of ‘taking listeners out of their comfort zone’, the concept is a modernist one, in an attempt to break the spell of ‘oldfashioned, outdated’ music, it had to go away to make place for the uncomfortable, unliked, despised and hence neglected modernist composers, struggling to get a place in the repertoire (which has miserably failed, by the way).
But DID some great music not take listeners out of their comfort zone at the time? Thinking of Beethoven’s symphonies, Bach’s relentless works, Mozart’s late piano concertos, the music of Berlioz, Wagner etc. etc….. even Brahms who was often considered ‘difficult’ and ‘audience hostile’ in his harsh and complex music. And yes, for many first listeners – and often also long afterwards – they found the music quite disruptive of what they had got used to hear. But the composers never intentionally tried to be disruptive, it was the result of their originality and artistic prowess. They wanted to be understood, not to meet irritation because of creating discomfort. There is no single evidence in biographical material, letters, memoirs, etc. etc. that points toward an intention to do the comfort zone thing. It is a 20C myth.
Personally I’m hoping for something special from Yuja for the upcoming Boulez celebrations. Perhaps in tandem with Duda, Salonen, or even Peter Sellars. Praying she doesn’t suddenly decide to take up Brahms and Schubert. There are lots of fine people doing that, for those whose tastes run that way.
Oh I look much forward to a Boulez celebration!
Sally
If that is the intention, it’s quite a disgusting move from Salonen. Yuja is a much more compelling musician to me, in all eras of music, than Salonen. I hope she doesn’t fall into the trap.
I’ve always been very disappointed by the way this Solanen guy dresses. No comparison!
Sally
I find it so interesting that people are perfectly happy with Beyonce baring her breasts and just about everything else while wildly gyrating on a stage, but cannot stomach a lovely pianist wearing a short skirt while doing much more complicated things while seated at a piano.
Shut your eyes if you don’t like it. Maybe, you will hear the music more clearly if you aren’t “aroused.”
Allright, Margaret, should better play a CD at home…? Instead of paying lots of money, to see and experience a live performance, including the mostly special atmosphere and ambiance of the venue…? Drinking moderate wines in the entre-acte and do some socializing? Why then anymore enter the concerthall…?
It’s not that one “cannot stomach” it. It’s that one shouldn’t be put into the stocks for calling it what it is, i.e., a blatant marketing/PR ploy . . . just like those pinnacles of cynical marketing, Beyonce and her handler, er, spouse.
Do people really have nothing better to do than discuss what an artist was wearing? Spend your time talking about the music instead. Life is short, I wouldn’t want to waste my time arguing about whether or not Lang Lang’s blazer matched his eye colour.
But a certain type of performers WANT you to discuss their clothing, eye colour, hairdo, antics, etc. because they think their performance is a theatre first and foremost.
Yes, they do that just so people & site (e.g. SD) that have nothing better to do have something to discuss & write about. Got it!
An educated friend went to her recent recital. When it was over, she said, it was over. No lasting impact or meaning. Just stunts at the keyboard. No wonder she has to distract people with her clothing and lack thereof.
1) Wang sexualises her stage performance with eye-catching, vulgar costumes. The staging includes the demonstrative exposure of her legs from ankle to shame.
2. she often appears half-naked, obviously confusing vulgarity in dress with ‘modern’ fashion and stylistic elegance.
3. the staging of her performances includes decoration with a digital device, a tablet. Like her sexualisation of the performance, this decoration is intended to convey to the audience that Wang is freeing the performance of classical music from the dust and mustiness.
4 Part of Wang’s ‘success’ is that her stage costumes are regularly discussed in concert reviews. A truly important artist does not need this.
5) Wang has achieved that for years she has been written and spoken about as a supposedly modern fashionista. Yet her concept is anything but modern: It is the age-old realisation of ‘sex sells.’ And yet the thirty-something is anything but really sexy – she simply looks ridiculous in her super high heels.
If Ms wang was a mediocre player, one might think that her outfits were meant to distract from her shortcomings as a musician – But she is a virtuoso and frankly, she could play in a burka, a gunny-sack or stark naked, and for me at least, her music would transcend any and all distractions.