Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Cellists in mini skirts

Yuja Wang’s appearance at the Hollywood Bowl, to play Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 while simultaneously wearing this body hugging outfit and appropriate clubbing heels, has attracted more than its fair share of comment, a couple of which are worth repeating here.

First up, music critic Robert D. Thomas, writing in the Pasadena Star-News, explained that:

It also may (or may not) be worth mentioning that she came on stage last night wearing the shortest dress I’ve ever seen a female pianist wear, an orange sheath that elicited gasps from the audience.

I can only infer from this that Robert D. Thomas has in fact seen shorter skirts, but only on male pianists.  Is he prepared to name names?  What sort of town is Pasadena anyway?  Cue Monty Python…

Pasadena squire? Famous place! Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

As for the other quotable quote, this came from her indoors, who when confronted with the Yuja Wang photo, simply asked “Is she a cellist?”

I wonder what Robert D. would have made of that!

 

Postscript to this piece – someone has injected some nice solid science into the debate – see Visual Cues Impact Judgment of Piano Performances.

No comments: