Yuja Wang: Conducting is ‘like doing it with the condom off’
NewsNever lost for an eye-catching line, the pianist concludes a dreary interview in the Telegraph with this going-home gift:
I ask Wang about her future career goals and she suggests she’d like to do more simultaneous playing and conducting. “I’ve done a little already and I loved it,” she says, then a cheeky smile pings across her face. “It was like doing it with the condom off!”
Go, Yuja!
Well, Yuja, as a flea-bitten tutti string player coming to the end of my inglorious appraisal of podium talents, your analogy rings true for one who has felt too often shafted without adequate protection by overpaid stick waving narcissists.
Compared to playing the piano, where every movement of arm/wrist/hand needs to be finely controlled or you get the wrong voicing, a broken melodic line, or whatever else, I guess it must feel liberating to just flail your arms around and have sound coming at you. I hope she learns some proper techniques … LOL
I cannot agree more to this post.Conducting looks more like monkey trying to reach his banana…
All the buzz about women conductors aside, do we really get better musical results when the soloist conducts, or when the soloist focuses on their part and a real conductor conducts the orchestra?
I’ve been extremely impressed by Barenboim, not so much by Perahia. But Barenboim is the rare musician who is highly accomplished in both tasks.
As for Yuja, she is most interesting when at the piano, not away. I am very grateful for her recital in Tanglewood earlier this week. At her best she played sublimely. Recordings can’t capture the full beauty or her sound, as experienced in a hall with great acoustics.
(John Borstlap would approve of Ozawa Hall’s style. Sally, you must arrange a trip for him.)
I’ve had several players of the Staatskapelle Berlin tell me that they would literally sweat through their clothes when Barenboim was conducting, because he’d just wave his arms around during complex operas like Tristan and expect the musicians to know what’s going on on stage. Sleeping pills were handed out regularly the night before an important performance because the players were so worried about the upcoming perfomance. And we all know what Barenboim was like when he was unhappy with the orchestra. Orchestra players had to start taking anxiety medication. Also, I’ve heard Barenboim conduct several times and was never really impressed.
I was at one of her first double-duty outings at Musikverein in January, allegedly leading members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
The so-credited „Leitung“ declined to appear for works by Mozart (a serenade for a wind octet) and Dvořák (another serenade, this one for winds, cello, and double bass).
While playing the Stravinsky concerto for piano and winds, she waved her left arm at the ensemble twice.
During the pause for a wardrobe change, the older couple next to me queried „Ist das ein Schertz“?
They walked-out during „Rhapsody in Blue“. I can’t recall if they left before or after the head-nod she added to her technique, in the general direction of the percussion.
Strictly because I love these pieces and, at Konzerthaus, I was able to get a ticket for 24 €, I will see the show, again with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, on 21 November:
Stravinsky: „Dumbarton Oaks“ – will she or won’t she?
Ravel:
G major piano concerto
„Le tombeau du Couperin“ – not specified if it will be the original solo piano version or the four-movements which were orchestrated … in which case I imagine she’ll be busy slipping into another sarong
Shostakovich: second piano concerto and … oops! Never mind.
Email from Konzerthaus:
We’re cancelling Shostakovich and will instead present:
Alexander Tsfasman: Suite für Klavier und Orchester „Jazz Suite“ (1945 ca.)
Uh … who? Wikipedia gives him three sentences. Jazz pianist, composer, conductor, arranger, publisher and activist born in Ukraine.
Why am I far more excited that I got tickets for Argerich (second time this year), Liciecki (third time), Andsnes (second time), and Jan Garbarek on sax?
She’s nearly 40, still parties acts like a teenager, and makes gross statements like this. No wonder no one wants her. Grow up.
No one wants her? You must be joking.
Are you paying her bills? No. So let her be. She’s awesome
Classy. Could you imagine Martha Argerich or Mitsuko Uchida stooping to that level lol
As if Uchida didn’t recently give an awesomely sardonic interview recently to that moron from the Times? “How should I know what some schmuck is going to write?”
Go Mitsuko!
No, because they are a different brand, separated by 2 generations.
Argerich was in her 20s in the swinging sixties. But she had something that the wang can only dream of: class.
We will see more of it as we age. Yuja Wang is on the verge of becoming what we usually call a middle-aged woman. In her mind she must assert her freshness and youth.
My inner know-it-all armchair psychologist wonders whether she is compensating for a lost childhood. Meantime, I enjoy her wonderfully evolving pianism, most recently in Tanglewood last week.
The results of a pianist also acting as conductor usually leads to mediocre results. Bernstein could pull it off, Dashing Danny B., and Mitsuko Uchida not so much. It works best if you are the bands’ conductor who periodically does this, rather than the touring pianist who doesn’t know the orchestra very well. It may work for Rhapsody in Blue for Yuja, but I bet not well for something with a larger orchestra and a more complex work.
Jeffrey Kahane does wonders when he conducts a Mozart Piano Concerto while performing.
Kahane’s conducting doesn’t mask his poor piano playing. His articulation is very weak.
Well, she is the “Sex and the City” generation, isn’t she?
With whom?
Let’s be realistic for a minute, shall we.
The real work with the conductor and orchestra is done in rehearsal. We all know this.
If the pianist-conductor has clearly communicated their ideas there, the orchestra is going to be fine in the performance with minimal time counting and cues from the conductor. Further, orchestras know the core romantic piano concerti repertoire like the back of their hand — I can’t imagine how many times an orchestra musician plays the Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, etc. piano concertos in their lifetime — and none of it has complex rhythms where you do need someone beating time.
If the performance is soggy, it’s not because there wasn’t someone on a podium waving their arms the whole time; it was because the pianist-conductor didn’t have much to say in rehearsal.
A violinist friend once shared the following riddle:
Q: What do performing Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” with a conductor, and using a condom during sex, have in common?
A: Safer with, but more fun without.
Classical/old music is not a religion…she brings excitement and energy…more of this direction…she is the Tina Turner of this format…
She is probably thinking of that old joke, that a conductor is like a condom: it’s nicer without, but it’s safer with.
Thankfully, Larry doesn’t need to use condoms. His attitude takes care of that.
What do the Germans say?
Ein Dirigent ist wie ein Kondom: mit ist sicherer, ohne ist schöner.
Probably learnt that from Klaus.
Well, I couldn’t say I know how to recognize good taste, but bad taste I can. It’s actually rejoicing when it’s done knowingly. Yujas case is not as serious as Lang Lang, a nice guy who made so many terrible choices, you can see most of the time he has no clue what he’s doing esthetically speaking …. but even if I appreciate Yujas bravura… something always missing.
Yuja and Lang Lang have one thing in common then: each has had sex at least once without a condom.
Yuja is a fresh voice in a very crusty,. fusty, stuffy field. It’s absolute fun to watch all the Beckmessers emerge from the woodwork like termites when she says something she knows will provoke them.
She doesn’t need to say these stupid things, anymore than she needs to wear those skimpy outfits! One is reminded of the comment of Branford Marsalis, who reportedly said to an unruly soprano “Bitch, just shut up and sing!” (You can guess who she was…)
I did not find the interview at all dreary. The interviewer, the brilliant Helen Brown, made a very good job of a rather unpromising subject.