A new adjective for Yuja Wang
NewsThe Boston Symphony describes her, with approval, as ‘the provocative and highly acclaimed Yuja Wang.’
That’s about right.
She opens Tanglewood tonight.
BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons lead BSO’s opening night performance of Bernstein’s Opening Prayer, with baritone Jack Canfield, Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with the provocative and highly acclaimed Yuja Wang, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century, Friday, July 8, at 8 p.m.
Tasteless would be about right …
Those women performers. Getting above their station. With their short skirts and popular profiles… And joyful piano playing … The fact that a bunch of daft old men don’t like her makes me like her even more.
I would get married with a woman i like
Even is she wore jeans at the ceromony
Sorry about the spelling.
Too much drink.
Hey! Hang on, Mr Keane. This daft old man thinks she’s bloody brilliant!
Get over it. She’s a free spirit, and like my newest cat, “full of beans”.
…and and awesome musician!
Is that a comment on her musicality or her dress sense?
Her dress sense is sometimes questionable, but her musical taste is almost always perfectly fine.
I believe the word you are looking for is distasteful.
And just shows what you know (or rather, don’t) about this incredible musician.
Arguably so – perhaps – but fortunately her piano playing is not.
Taste Deez Nuts Ernest. Yuja has incredible taste beyond your pedestrian sensibilities.
Is the performer pictured above an “exotic dancer”? She sure dresses like one.
Foxy
Oh dear
provoking rather than provocative
Hmm … Are we supposed to pick up a subtext here? If Ms Wang is not much beyond provocative and highly acclaimed, in your opinion, Mr. Liebrecht, why not just say so? Same, if you wish to challenge the accepted status of The Rire of Spring.
In the past promoting this kind of image would have seemed crass, and in poor taste. Today, a proportion of younger audiences doesn’t seem to mind. I assume she’s a good pianist.
She is indeed a very good-looking lady!!!! But that is besides the point. She is an exceptionally brilliant pianist!! And that is ALL that really matters
If you have actually label something as “provocative” somehow that makes it less so…
She plays the daylights out of R. Strauss’ “Burleske” in the new DG box of major Strauss orchestral works, with A. Nelsons conducting both the Boston Symphony, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. No old-school German ‘stodginess’ for her. I think it’s great – it really comes alive.
With The Rite of Spring, provocative and highly acclaimed gets double billing.
Gorgeous and immensely talented.
What she wears on (or off) stage is up to her. Her playing is magnificent.
Who cares about the clothes? Aren’t we here for music? Get over it
Seems a number of men are asking “What music?”
True. Her concerts are to my knowledge the only ones, outside of the opera, where you can see older men with binoculars. for real.
BSO is egging her on to show more skin??? Some things are better left to the imagination and do not need to be spelled out!
The ballet “The Rite of Spring” considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century? I beg to differ; the past century produced a lot better than that (and even Stravinsky bettered it with Firebird and Petrouchka).
No it did not, and La Sacré is definitely greater than those two ballets written earlier.
Yuja owes apologies to no one for how she dresses, looks, or presents herself. Who cares???
What she “owes” to her audience is musicianship, tasteful performances, and artistic growth. And on all three fronts she delivers, in my opinion. And I’m shocked I would be one to say this, because I was in the audience in Boston when she made her debut as a substitute for the great Martha Argerich in Tchaikovsky’s 1st piano concerto, conducted by Dutoit. The audience went wild for her flashy, substance-free performance. I thought it was vulgar and couldn’t wait for it to end. But when I heard her again many years later, I could hear that there was real artistry in her performance that was completely absent from the Tchaikovsky pyrotechnics. And I’ve heard her since another several times including in a solo recital (and was frankly shocked I would be buying tickets to hear her solo after that awful debut which I detested).
But what I hear now with my own two ears is an artist who continually seems to be challenging herself, who is world-class in her artistry while continuing to artistically grow, who is now matching the always-evident incredible technique with real emotional content that moves me, and who I greatly enjoy hearing.
Bravo, Yuja!!
Top comment here by a very long way. At least there’s someone on this site who can allow an artist to mature, and allow themselves to change their opinion as she does so. I salute you, sir.
(But I would also recommend searching YouTube for the wonderful masterclass she did as a teenager with Leon Fleisher, on the Schubert C minor Sonata. To me it was already clear there was an extremely thoughtful – and astonishingly open – musical personality.)
Bravo for your genuine openness to the process of artistic maturation in musicans.
I love how much shade the classical community throws at the world’s top virtuoso just because of how she looks. And people wonder why classical music is “dying” haha
Wang is certainly not the world’s best virtuoso. Classical music does not die, only the people who listen to it. Do you think that so-called classical music will continue to be heard because an immature Chinese pianist takes her clothes off and abuses concerts to be celebrated for her body? That’s all Wang is doing.
Well said, Karin Becker.
“…the world’s top virtuoso…” ?? How many different pianists have you actually listened to?
Also, classical music is very, very far from dying. Visit South Korea, China, Japan; the average age of audiences is approximately 20, and concert halls are packed.
Must festival promoters resort to the use of tantalizing adjectives to describe performers at the expense of music? Is this the new trend to attract audiences?
Looks do matter in any field, as we all know. The focus is all on looks, not on music.
Those who know and love YW will show up regardless, but those who have never heard of her will first wonder what she’ll be wearing, not what she’ll be playing.
What’s next? I can see the headlines now: ”The luscious…ravishing … tantalizing… bewitching… utterly gorgeous… femme fatale of the piano… captivating… temptress… enchantress ….. or even the hunky… heartthrob… insanely handsome winner of the ….. competition ”.
Yet another classical artist with good looks and great artistic skill.
When you’re as impressive a musician as YW, you can afford to push the envelope … press people’s buttons … tweak noses …. (apply your own descriptor here)
Just different nothing wrong with it !!
Her recital at the Philharmonie de Paris was really good, featuring some Ligeti Etudes and a Scriabin Sonata.
Fortunately, her six encores did not include the silly Mozart Alla turca with the extra “virtuoso” bits she adds.
Also, she was not wearing her usual sexy dress …
“… and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, considered one of the greatest works of the 20th century”.
By who? It was a provocative (!) work at the time but not even Stravinsky’s best piece.
PS go Yuja!
Provocative? You mean her slinky dresses? I don’t get it.
Ideally, musical talent and vulgarity should be incompatible, but they are not.
Excepcional artista!
Linda e Maravilhosa Mulher!
Empresta beleza, graça, sensibilibade, alegria, e leveza a um mundo merecedor disto.
Continues assim, Yuja! O mundo agradece!
In my opinion, La Sacré is indeed Stravinsky’s greatest achievement and it is arguably the greatest symphonic work of the last century.
Come on Yuja; get over it! Stop dressing like you’re 13.
Can we take a step back and toss around how TPhilip Ewell might address this?
First off, many here are calling Le Sacre a masterpiece…can this really be known?
YJW’s concert attire has been forced on her—surely she’d rather be performing Chinese folk music in a qipao instead of being forced to wear this attire, no?
Is it the domination of white males that demands such from her, given that corporate sponsorships for concert series are often from companies led by such people—white men?
We need to consider this before commenting. And, we cannot know if she is beautiful or not—nor can we know if she is an above average pianist—because that would assume the knowledge of every person on earth, in both visual appearance and pianistic skill.
Gifted but bizarre, would be my adjectives (and conjunction) of choice. But let’s stick to her artistry: lightning fast, technically flawless and ice-cold. When I compare her approach to the introspection, sensitivity and taste of the best of her contemporaries–Beatrice Rana, for instance, or Elisabeth Brauss (who, respectively, have braved the Goldberg Variations and the most demanding–I mean intelectually–of Beethoven’s sonatas), I think of Ruskin: “Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.” Would it be going to far to say that the hysterical praise lavished on YW, to the point of obscuring the achievements of equally but differently gifted artists, is an expression of the fetishization of perfection in a digital culture impatient with the warm, flawed touch of the human? Maybe this explains the allure: the bod radiates the heat the bot lacks.
@Mark – very well said. Yuja has the “chops” i.e. excellent technique. But what is missing is the evidence of an outstanding musical mind, a grand conception of the musical composition, the magic that takes your breath away when you witness the work of a truly great interpretive artist. Instead, everything she does is perfectly calculated – her playing, her (immature) fashion sense, her marionette-like bow – her entire stage persona. Kudos to her for making an excellent living, but true artistry lies beyond circus tricks.
This veers quite close to offering a deeply cutting critique of nearly the entire virtuoso industry. A good deal of the artistry involved in interpretation at an instrument is based on the carving of given lines.
I’ve long thought that many of the most beloved composers, were they alive today, would not be anywhere near the classical industry as it stands, devoted as they were to freshness, innovation, and musical vitality within the context of their time.
Circus act.
Left-anterior-insula-less audience.