Pianist Yuja Wang struck a chord in the Hollywood Bowl this month and not simply with your ex performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. The 24-year-old Chinese soloist had necks craning, tongues wagging and flashbulbs popping when she stepped onto wearing an orange, thigh-grazing, body-hugging dress atop sparkly gold strappy stiletto sandals.
In particular, Wang’s outfit was obviously a hot topic at the concert and continued after La Times music critic Mark Swed’s review appeared in print and internet-based. While Swed praised her delicacy, speed and grace on the piano, his fashion comments - such as the observation: “Her dress Tuesday was so short and tight which had there been any a lesser amount of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not combined with an adult” - have touched off a spirited debate among music critics and bloggers in what constitutes appropriate concert attire and, conversely, whether a critique of a performer’s clothes has any place in a music review.
It must be noted that as you move the Chicago Philharmonic carries a very specific dress code for members of their orchestra (several ones, actually, with respect to the period and season), very easy affect soloists. They, based on an L.A. Phil representative, are informed exactly what the orchestra will probably be wearing and may choose whatever they feel is most suitable. “For women that’s traditionally an evening gown,” the rep said, “but that’s not necessarily true.”
Although Wang declined, through her management company, to debate clothing or why she chose to put it on with the particular performance, others were quick to protect her wardrobe decision.
“I examine Yuja broke but total sympathy,” said Cameron Carpenter, a 30-year-old Grammy-nominated musician whose often flamboyant attire while playing the organ similarly cuts against expectations. “For a very important factor, she’s an excellent artist as well as another, she appears to be in regards to a hundred million dollars for the reason that dress.”
Carpenter describes Wang’s wardrobe preferences, like his or her own (including Chanel, Valentino and Vivienne Westwood pieces he’s tweaked to his liking), like a performer’s “sovereign rights.”
“A performer can do anything and everything to provide their music in any way they think fit. And for that reason, the performer presents must be considered to be an overall whole. It’s far more crucial that it’s genuine self-expression.
“What individuals are missing this is that Yuja might want to remain visible being making, as many individuals do, an individual statement without having played an email,” Carpenter said. “After all, they see you before they hear you.”
That all-of-a-package notion is echoed by Gerald Klickstein, a school of Vermont School for that Arts faculty member and author in the Musician’s Way: Strategies for Practice, Performance, and Wellness, a textbook that advises undergraduate music students on all aspects of the music career - including proper attire.
“The moment the audience catches sight in the performer, the performance has begun - their mannerisms, their attire, everything matters.” (Therefore, Klickstein says, it can be fair game for mention in a music review.)
Far from being inappropriate, Klickstein said, Wang’s wardrobe was a wholly authentic reflection of artist, set and setting. “She can be a magnificent pianist ... She’s playing in L.A., she’s 24, she’s a soloist, and there’s plenty of excitement in their playing that’s being conveyed through her attire. I do believe it’s terrific that she’s expressing herself from the stage and taking full good thing about the visual issues with a live concert.”
While Klickstein (who was simply not at the concert) said it’s challenging to understand specifically what caused the present concert clothing kerfuffle, he offers one possibility: “If you (check out) the issues facing major orchestras, there’s a huge challenge in dealing with the major donors with conservative tastes and looking to please them while wanting to do the type of innovative work that would draw a younger audience. There’s an inclination for audience members to want to have their expectations met and never be amazed.
“Classical music culture is full of conformity and obedience, and that’s one reason organic beef see some of this resistance.”
Mary Davis, a music professor, chairwoman from the department of music at Case Western Reserve University and author of countless books checking intersection of music and fashion (including Ballets Russes Style: Diaghilev’s Dancers and Paris Fashion this season and Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism in 2006) also pointed on the confounding of expectations.
“It cuts contrary to the expectation people will often have that classical music is distant somehow from anything as frivolous or insubstantial as fashion - when it’s by no means.”
And, while Davis says there’s certainly nothing new on a sunny day in relation to a soloist dressing to stand out resistant to the black-and-white-clad orchestral backdrop, “what is one area totally new is the form of edge that it’s testing,” she said.
“It’s a very important factor to put on a couture gown that could be strapless but all the way to the floor with whatever heels you desire underneath, but to be sold inside a really, really bright orange minidress with revealing cut-outs like this the first is another story. I think that sort of cutting-edge, high-fashion modernity really come up with stir. It doesn’t go along with the esthetic in the classical performance.”
Davis dismissed the argument a soloist’s outfit could detract from your performance.
“I think the idea that what somebody’s wearing will so distract you that you will never be capable of take note of their performance seems absurd. When she sits down on the piano and starts playing like a maniac, you’re likely to pay attention to what she’s playing. If you’re not, you almost certainly shouldn’t be there to begin with.”
But no less than one recently published study suggests that wardrobe choice may influence audience perception.
In her own article “Posh Music Should Equal Posh Dress,” which appeared within the April 2010 publication of the journal Psychology of Music, British. researcher Noola Griffiths, who holds a doctorate inside psychology of performance through the University of Sheffield, asked audience members to rate the skill sets of female performers dressed in three outfits: jeans plus a T-shirt, a “nightclubbing” outfit (which Griffiths describes as a body-conscious outfit that includes a short skirt and halter-style top) and a floor-length concert dress.
“In addition to being known as inappropriate,” Griffiths said, “the performers in the nightclubbing dress were viewed as less technically proficient and less musical than when they were wearing the concert dress. Which said that this form of body-focused dressing appears to affect the perception of musical skills.”
But, as Davis described, the 24-year-old pianist can be so skilled that could hardly become qualified as a concern.
“She is one of the stars that’s ushering in a very new era of technical perfection and polish,” Davis said. “So how will you often be paying attention to the dress rather than hearing what she’s doing? I merely don’t buy it.”
Make sure people buys tickets to view Yuja Wang play, she is going to almost assuredly be allowed free rein by sitting in the piano wearing whatever she pleases.
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Classical+gasp/5300093/story.html#ixzz1WFFXL5uL
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