Concert fashion
Yesterday I commented on Julia Fischer’s concert decolletage. But perhaps I’m behind the times in classical music fashion, as commenter “Les” pointed out in that thread, when he directed me to highly-acclaimed pianist Yuja Wang’s orange minidress that rocked the Hollywood bowl last summer:
All I can say is that it’s fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how much of Ms. Wang you’d like to see) that she’s not a cello player. As a former student of the instrument, I know whereof I speak.
I wondered how Ms. Wang managed to sit in the shorter dress. I can’t find a video of it, but here’s a triptych that includes a sitting position. She does a pretty good job under somewhat challenging circumstances:
Here’s Yuja in more conventional dress, playing a piece I once (laboriously) learned, and love very much:
Wang has a beautiful touch. But I still prefer Rubinstein’s version, especially in the allegro passages:
But Rubinstein had it relatively easy. He didn’t have to worry about his pants riding up as he played.
Uh.
It’s always seemed to me that there must be a point at which it dawns on a woman incessantly pulling at her riding hem, slipping top, wayward straps, that she has been twice sold a bill of goods. Surely modesty can be had without an endless war of tug. Or do beautiful young women no longer dress for other women, and/or men, but simply for the challenge?
Wang’s playing is very pretty, but Rubenstein’s version has the passion that Chopin demands. That being siad, I think I shall show my students Wang’s video to demonstrate “perfect piano hands”!
It’s basically a girdle and I love it. That’s a roar for all dragon moms and puritanical feminists everywhere.
Wrong.
That a roar for dragon moms and a roar AGAINST puritanical feminists everywhere.
If it hadn’t been for Bugsy, I would have had no exposure to classical music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j97EJQ1z7nY
Well, for what it’s worth, here’s short skirt and Scriabin. Sort of hard to concentrate on the music alone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=nHO4Ucw9zL4
And the interesting thing is if you listen to both the Wang and then the Rubenstein you’ll know the difference between a professional and a genius.
Great legs.
Your cello story was lovely. I had no piano to play when I left home, and 21 years later, my father brought his Kawai out and it was a real struggle to pick up from 21 years ago, but Chopin’s waltz in C# minor is one of my favorites to play. (I do suffer from a rare birth defect of having two left hands and only thumbs, but I don’t let that deter me.)
It’s funny, now that I have been playing for a little more than ten years, C# minor used to intimidate me, but now it is one of the easier keys. It’s like E major in a bad mood.
I’m with you Mr. Frank. Love the legs. They’re not quite Bardot but they’re lovely and full of goodness. Can you imagine a strip tease (and you are the only one getting it because you are her husband) with violin included?
Wow!
Well then, it’s a really good thing she isn’t a cellist after all. The health inspectors would have to close the concert halls down. And they would have to be mopped between sessions.
Vanderleun, what is it that you hear that makes the difference? Is it even expressible? I hear a difference but I certainly can’t say it’s the difference between genius and competence.
People who have had the beauty of Western Civilization early in their life should be grateful.
Beeyootiful! The music was nice, too.
I think, speaking only for myself, that Rubinstein was the gold standard for many years, and almost every pianist I’ve ever heard play this particular piece sounds like every other pianist who plays it.
Hearing Wang play this piece was like hearing it for the first time. Subtle and spirited at the same time.That was the surprise for me.
uh huh!
If the musician wants to be taken seriously, she’ll have to cover up. Otherwise, all men and women will be looking at her body and not listening to her music.
Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.
Whoaaaa…I haven’t been going to enough concerts lately!
If the musician wants to just be a musician, she’ll cover up. If she wants to be a performer and an entertainer and show off a piece of music for everything that it can do, she’ll use all the tools she has.
Unlike western Caucasian women (and western minorioties), Asian women have not yet learned to be men and hate being feminine!!!
Ergo they are scooping up bachelors in the US… after all, they are thin, trim, and polite, on average have a 20 point higher IQ. Traditional family oriented… often religious in some way…
The level of mixed relationships has more than doubled in recent years…
Now. I am not a racist… but I ALSO believe that the state has no right BREEDING people to the state’s needs… domesticating them…
I am in such a relationship… and i LOVE my wife VERY much, and have had an incredible wonderful relationship these years together. It’s not all peaches and cream… nothing and I mean NOTHING is… not even peaches and cream!!!!
But it’s not for lack of trying with locals, and finding her was not a directed act either.
Its just that until you DO meet the difference and all that.. (Or your old enough to remember it before it changed)… you realize that all that happened is that the feminists made women unmarryable
Which parallels their STATED goal of destroying marriage and all relationships between men..
I guess that way women can pop out babies like cows and turn them over to the state and go on with their idea of a party which for some reason looks exactly like what we used to call debasement.
Heck… to show you what feminists say about women like her… well. You won’t believe it.
But, to clearly cover my point and connection.
The west has genocided… and we do not realize the things we discuss are the symptomns and indicators as we have been told that these things mean something else. While they game the numbers and their followers attack those that disagree… as if our thoughts negate the magic that will happen if we all think the same!!! (voodoo doll sympathetic magic, disguised as eruditious production)
Why There May Not Always Be an England – Or an America
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/02/a_warning_from_britain.html
[edited for length by n-n]
Yes… and note that we copied the Russians who are dying out…
And the Chinese? They didn’t allow feminism… they decide to take a different demographic response so that later when it all played out (that later is now), they would be in a different demographic position than their ENEMIES…
Western civilization was a product of western people, which is mostly the product of one race and two religions… that race, when you are HONEST and not gaming things… is the race that freed mankind from the oppression of various forms of forced ruler ship, master/slave, rule/ruled…
So in order to remove western civilization and end it, and return to aristocracy, feudalism, kings, despots, whatever you want to call totalitarian rule and ownership of all people…
You have to exterminate its people… and last century taught them that you can’t exterminate what they believe is the core heart of capitalism (Judaism) as Christians will save them.. And follow many of the same INDIVIDUALIST notions. So the answer to the question of the problem of the west was to exterminate them.. and since OVERT extermination met with such resistance.. Rather than embracement, (ever notice that they are always surprised that the non sociopathic people don’t agree with their pragmatic solutions? Like genocide…)
So they said that the END CONDITION is what is important… not the path you take to that end.
So if you describe the end of the path to the condition in terms of great things
You can get the LEMMINGS to walk off a cliff and self exterminate…
(funny how the play lemmings was all about how the peace movement and hippies was really nihilistic suicide… 30 years later… it now wants to embrace that suicide to save a hunk of rock that wont last anyway!)
Here’s how it works:
So the whole game of redistribution, and that is how you exterminate one group and foment another. Their mistake was to think the Chinese was an oppressed minority they could leverage.
Instead… what they have is a huge amount of Chinese and Asian women seeking American men!
In fact… my wife tells me of discussions among Chinese women comparing their children’s pictures with mixed children and really loving how beautiful smart and that they are.
So the big joke is on them (And on superior more than equal liberated western women)!!!!!!!
The men who were to die out (Caucasian men)… rather than die out for lack of mates…
Have found a set of female mates who are SMARTER on average than their historically local pool.
Even funnier.. The oppressive racist men are not oppressive nor are they racist…
so they have no problem mixing with superior mates…
So rather than actually destroy western civilization through exterminating them by liberating their women and screwing with their heads in mass social games… all they did was destroy themselves</b.
the women, if you have your eyes open, are also mixing… however they are not mixing with Ashkenazi Jews, or Chinese etc.. they are mixing with the welfare group who gets free money from socialism, as they have similar views from ideological games.
And their mates are doing the same thing, as the Chinese women and asian women have similar values to the men, who have the old values they had that created western civ.
So when you see this Asian woman in classical areas dressed so sexy… BUT NOT TRASHY
What your seeing is someone who LOVES what they are…
[edited for length by n-n]
But Rubinstein had it relatively easy. He didn’t have to worry about his pants riding up as he played.
yes… and ginger rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards… (except choreograph, make him practice like he did her, select her over others, etc. etc. etc.)
funny how we internalize and repeat and reform the feminisms Isms..
only a woman would say that it was harder because she is wearing a mini skirt and exposing herself, when she gets to choose what she wears!!!!
unlike feminist women, if Chopin thought that he would have more people in the audience for wearing a gimp suit… would he?
and therin lies the bs in the difference…
from the perspective of western women
they choose to be impinged then claim how hard it is… (then why do it? oh yeah… the oppressive men who make her.. whatever)
yes… you picked up the cross of debasement and now are forced to wear revealing clothes now that your liberated, and of course that just makes life so much harder than for the men..
who never have to wear heels
dont worry about their pants riding up
maybe THATS why the feminists are forcing men to run in heels… and our military…
US Soldiers Forced to Wear Fake Breasts and Empathy Bellies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dkygJFFvobs
you see…
For modern women… (from the feminist side)
Existence is just way too hard!!!!!!!!!
Existence is way too unfair!!!
and its all the mens fault…
they have it easier.. ‘
yeah… the 50,000 men who died in Vietnam certainly had it easier than the 8 women that died…
even more so now that your equal existence is just too much for modern women!!!
such freaky sick stuff that is internalized to the point they dont even realize its sickness… well thats normalizing whats bad…
if its too hard, then change your clothes
if its too hard, then stay home
this points game of… now we are equal, what i do is so much harder as i am doing it in sexist clothing that i really shouldn’t be wearing when maoist pajamas are really the proper wear…
those oppressive men… they somehow always end up on top..
[edited for length by n-n]
Artfldgr: have you entirely lost your sense of humor? Do you really think I meant that Rubinstein had it easier? OF COURSE I know that it’s Wang’s choice to wear that getup, and that she has no one to blame for herself if she’s uncomfortable in it.
It. Was. A. Joke.
Oh, and by the way: I didn’t notice Wang’s concert dresses until someone “pointed it out” not because I lack some sort of radar, but merely because I do not follow modern-day classical music at all, and had never heard of or seen this woman or even her male counterparts until a commenter told me about her. Had I seen her on my own, I would immediately have noticed her garb (as I did, by the way, with Fischer, who was “pointed out” to me by a YouTube algorithm that recommended that video to me because of other classical music I’d watched there).
And despite your long discourse on Asian vs. Western women, Fischer (whose outfit I also commented on) is German.
We should all be grateful that there are lovely and stunning women in the field of classical music performance. I mean, think about it. Look at all the hideously ravaged old geezers infesting the rock and roll genre. And all the androgynous drag quings in the pop genre.
Yep, I might be a woman, but I like looking at a pretty girl playing the piano or cello as much as any guy.
“If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own . . . how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.” William A White
“If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.” Friedrich Nietzsche
i think this is a perfect explanation of the “female condition”…
A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves.
Sivananda
“She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.” Oscar Wilde
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Oscar Wilde
[nicer way to say the same thing i did]
“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”Oscar Wilde
“Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.” Oscar Wilde
[and blaming the man so it wont stop]
“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.” Henry Rowland
“Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends up blocking his retreat.” Oscar Wilde
“A woman can defend her virtue from men much more easily than she can protect her reputation from women” Hubbard
“A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.” Hubbard
“Every woman is wrong until she cries, and then she is right, instantly” T Haliburton
“I don’t like compliments, and I don’t see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn’t mean” Oscar Wilde
[because of the differences between when he does and when he doesn’t… see Eden, apple, snake]
“A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”Oscar Wilde
“A man who will not lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings” Olin Miller
Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies – Grace Slick feminist…
and to answer WHY she would wear such but then be unhappy with the attention…
“The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.” Madame de Stael
“I like when a guy makes me feel like a woman and a little girl at the same time.” Tara Reid [such is now verboten]
“A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.” Lana Turner…
and a miniskirt and class is a great way to do that in the after party… (easier than wall street – or haven’t you notice the quality of the ladies changes there?)
“Woman was taken out of man; not out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled underfoot; but out of his side to be equal to him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved”
🙂
This kind of thing has been pretty widespread in classical music for 20 years or so. Sure, these pretty young women wearing skin-tight low-cut etc etc catch the eye, but really I just find it annoying, because it seems transparently manipulative.
Artfldgr: have you entirely lost your sense of humor? Do you really think I meant that Rubinstein had it easier?
Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy. Heinlein
“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.” – Mark Twain
so there you have it… thffffppppt! 🙂
no, i havent… (sort of)
but the other phrase that goes with it isn’t meant as a joke… is it? its akin to a whole genre of such comments today we put on the podium and have a good time with…
but are really insulting…
and due to PC… similar response is verboten
nearly all humor is founded in sadism
and some kinds of humor ends up being a traditional way to kick the dog…
go here…
http://www.quotegarden.com/feminism.html
page down…
Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. ~Faith Whittlesey
You see… its NOT funny to MEN who have been subjected to similar and of course are prevented from their own insights.
right now i am sitting in a tiny hole because such notions are all over and the media making all men idiots… and that affects women and their choices and what, in this case, they chose to do…
IT DOES HAVE AN EFFECT OVER TIME
in fact.. without the 40 years of hatred you don’t experience… that started in childhood for males today… that WOULD be funny!!!!
i dont know what year you were born..
but i grew up straddling the change…
and so i went from a time of respect towards both, and harridans playing mind games to show otherwise so they can have an unpaid army for their agenda that also pay for their lives and past times…
but when your a boy growing up and everyone tells you the worlds problems are because of you and your maleness… that you have no good qualities… that unless your gay your a moron… that your also an oppressor…
and of course… not all guys get that.
the less geeky seem to get more respect as the ladies want them more… but hey! if its someone that is not exciting, etc.. and or on the outer margins for today…
then they get both barrels ALL The time…
all one has to do is see:
“big bang theory” – Killer Robot Instability
The Big Bang Theory: Only Doable Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LOnCYqF2k&feature=related
starts at 40 seconds…
if you have ever been on the receiving end like that (And NEVER did anything creepy), you too would not think that certain things were funny (when reciprocal things are considered sexist!)
the things that pretty women dressed to attract have done and said and did high fives over with friends would ASTOUND you.
but of course, women deny that men have such ‘male experiences’ as only the women ones count… (according to them)
ever been yelled at by a woman because you held a door for her?
ever been yelled at by one for NOT holding the door?
i have experienced both… and i doubt you experienced either…
what most REASONABLE normal women who are not ideology bound (and tend to be much older) don’t get, is what their sisters who ARE, actually do to people.
in fact the whole idea of women are never violent, etc… never do bad, etc… kind of creates this thing where even POLICE will not believe based on the humor, the message, etc…
Why not buy a T-shirt?
Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them!
http://www.davidandgoliathtees.com/women/tees/boys-are-stupid-throw-rocks-at-them.html
if i wear a shirt that just says
“girls are stupid” would you imagine what flack i would get?
outside your purview… is a whole other class of women that dominate and that spend a lot of their time being SOCIAL SADISTS… and hiding behind passive aggressive games like “its only a joke”.
that phraseology is a COMMON one with them… its a standard way to say women are equal but better so they are entitled…
[and we OFTEN parrot such structures without even thinking about where we picked up the formula]
of course, YOU are not looking for that… your trying to make a joke… but you never had to put up with such jokes when you were the “intellectual whore”
bet ya dont know what that is… 🙂
there is a whole subculture and thing that connects to all this…
other examples of humor from the same genre and type…
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. ~Joseph Conrad
I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. ~Sally Kempton
from a feminist humor page….
Behind every successful man is a surprised woman Maryon Pearson
[edited for length by n-n]
The Naked Woman and the Violin
He contrasted two characters: a young woman who had devoted her life to playing the violin, and a young woman eager for the public’s attention. Challenged to prove themselves in the public square, each went down to the street to show off their talents. The violinist played, and struggled to attract a handful (much as Joshua Bell, one of the world’s greatest violinists, struggled to attract listeners at a crowded Metro stop in D.C. last year, as shown in an award winning story by Gene Weingarten). The other young woman went down into the street and took her clothes off and attracted a huge crowd.
[snip]
But Rosenstiel’s story doesn’t end after the first day.
Imagine, he says, what would happen on the second day, and the third day, and so on. The violinist would continue to play, and continue to attract a small number of listeners…but over time, if she was good, her audience would grow. In contrast, the naked woman would still attract attention, but her act would grow increasingly stale with each passing day, pushing her towards more outrageous and humiliating stunts. This, argues Rosenstiel, is the fate of the sensationalist press. What works for a day, fades quickly; in contrast, what works over time, gains in stature.
and so…
we know how this will end
given how it started…
Asperger’s Syndrome and Humor
http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/articles/miscellaneous/aspergers_syndrome_humor.html
As a doctoral student in psychology thinking about my doctoral project, I wondered if part of the social difficulty experienced by individuals with AS could be attributed to problems navigating the complex language of humor.
[snip]
I noticed that their sense of humor was not attuned to that of their peers and wondered if individuals on the uppermost end of the spectrum, those with AS, also perceived humor differently than their peers. The difficulty for a child with an atypical sense of humor is that they are less likely to draw others to them through this medium. This is especially the case during the teen years, when peers are often very unaccepting of differences.
[snip]
My research suggests that students with AS produce and perceive humor in ways that are different from their same-age peers. They tended to prefer jokes with straightforward endings more than did students in the control group, and their humor production was often less organized and less formulaic. However, I clearly recognized that the boys with AS both wanted to laugh and to make others laugh. Therefore, rather than calling this finding a humor deficit, humor atypicality is perhaps more appropriate.
since we are abused a lot
we become sensitive to jokes that are not really jokes but abuse masquerading as such.
so when you said it. it WAS a joke
but when they said it for year,s and so on. it was never meant to be a joke.
there are race jokes everyone laughs at as the intent is no harm… the same joke in another context or by someone else elicits a different response
as a white… i cant say the same jokes as the spanish guy whose whole stock and trade is race jokes… (a lot about his own people)
well.. as a woman, there are certain jokes that fall into the same category or work on different groups differntly…
especially today when everything is this passive aggressive hate game…
the point is that its not always funny
because who came before you making a similar joke, but doing it to hurt passive aggressively in public…
yeah i have a sense of humor.
but the format used no longer is humorous EXCEPT to women who have been kind of trained to respond… while men quietly wait. 🙂
Not into classical music at all.. I’d take an Iron Maiden concert over that any day of the week.
That said, I think after seeing her in that outfit I may have a change of heart 🙂
Curtis, you asked about the difference between “a professional and a genius” (from the inestimable vanderleun). I can tell you what the difference is for me. I was never lucky enough to be in a position to learn a musical instrument, and my taste in music is eclectic to the extreme, so it might not help you much. (I would like to know what other’s think about their own take on the difference. The more you learn the more you can enjoy, so thanks, Neo, for your posts on the arts. I listened to the entire 55:17 video of Villela, it was wonderful!)
I may sound silly when I say this, but watch the pianists. The professionals are fun to watch, but with the genius I feel drawn with a strong emotional attachment with the way they address the piano. It varies with the particular piece they are playing, of course. In the Chopin piece in the video, watching Rubenstein’s hands makes me think of the lines from Dulcinea (The Man of La Mancha):
“If I reach out to thee, do not tremble and shrink from the touch of my hand on your hair.
Let my fingers but see, thou art warm and alive and no phantom to fade in the air…
Dulcinea, I have sought thee, song thee, dreamed thee, Dulcinea…”
Rubenstein caresses the music as though it was almost too wonderful for him to touch. There are moments of slight hesitation, and moments of tender exploration of the keys. There are moments of controlled exhilaration: he doesn’t want to totally release what he feels because it will be too much for both of them.
With Rubenstein, sometimes he’ll swagger with a piece, sometimes he’ll fight the music. He can play many roles, as the music demands. It’s not a matter of just sitting down and playing the piece well.
To me, professional pianists present the music for our enjoyment, and for theirs. And they do it well. They are definitely part of the performance, often with special virtuosity, as with a “consummate” professional–after all, that’s why they are playing before you and not someone else; but it is always to me a presentation, a sharing, the pianist, the music, and the audience. I can be excited with the pianist, or having fun with him, or marveling at the music itself with him or his talent. At times he can take you with him for quite a ride. But I think with genius, on the other hand, it’s just the pianist and the music; the fact I’m listening is incidental, even though I’m enveloped by the experience.
That’s why you can sometimes see flashes of genius with a professional; it’s why every once in a while a genius will be there only to exhibit the music, and you will walk away feeling it was an off night. The music will have been played correctly, but the genius didn’t show up.
Anyway, watch a few pianists play a specific piece that you really like. Look and listen for the differences, and similarities. Then next time you watch (or listen) to any music with any pianist, you’ll have more to look and listen for.
Rereading what I wrote, I have to laugh a little, so I’ll send have to send this right away.
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