by liberal japonicus
I may be overthinking this, but these are the dots I am connecting.
In the news is the story of Yuja Wang, a Chinese concert pianist, pushing back against Norman Lebrecht, a BBC Radio 3 classical music presenter. From the Guardian
Pianist Yuja Wang today made public an email sent to her by writer, critic and Radio 3 presenter Norman LeBrecht, and her response that accuses the journalist of “derogatory misogynistic bullying”.
Lebrecht had written to the musician querying her decision to withdraw from a BBC Lebrecht Interview stating: “I am surprised and disappointed. I thought you were a serious person who stood by her commitments. I may have to revise that opinion.”
The piece quotes Lebrecht
Yuja Wang had agreed with me a year ago to do a Lebrecht Interview for Radio 3. She kept putting it off until I lost patience and sent her an email that was perhaps a tad sharp. There was nothing bullying in telling her that I thought less of her than before, nor was it misogynistic: I would say the same to a male artist. She published the email, the BBC took a view and pulled my next series. I apologised to Sam Jackson and the BBC for any unintended embarrassment,” said Lebrecht.
Wang is a phenomenal pianist, full stop. She has technique and speed and she is drawn to pieces that display this. After I posted earlier about Prokofiev, I had her performing Prokofiev’s 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos on my repeat list as well as her Ravel. She also does Art Tatum’s Tea for Two as an encore piece as well as some other jaw dropping stuff. This Rick Beato video has her playing Flight of the Bumblebee and Beato points out that her hands move so fast, they are just a blur.
But (and you all knew, this couldn’t just be about music), she also distinguishes herself from other female pianists in her fashion choices when she performs. Looking at the youtube videos I listed above or a dive into Youtube can show this, but this Dave Hurwitz podcast discusses having to delete comments from his video about her Rachmaninoff cycle and you can get an idea of content by the title Music Chat: Yuja Wang’s Dresses (And The Pigs Who Talk About Them) Hurwitz wasn’t too high on the recording in the first video, which I assumed let some commenters think that it was open season on Wang. This post points out that Wang’s fashion choice might reflect Wang’s approach to music.
Is it not possible that Yuja Wang’s musical brilliance and “irreverent” clothes and interviews are not at odds, but in harmony with each other? I think they are. Yuja Wang is being informative, not “irreverent” or performative in the pejorative sense, when she shares that she thinks of Prokofiev as a “naughty boy” and Mozart as a “party animal.” It’s well understood (at least, it was when I was studying at University) that they absolutely were, and she’s channeling the sh*t out of that. That you’re so blinded by her age and gender that you cannot make these connections, to my mind, disqualifies you from being able to critique it.
I think it is also important that she came to the US when she was 14 to study at the Curtis Institute, renting an apartment and living on her own. I imagine that a lot of her fashion choices came about from when she was there, which was around 2002, an era of bare midriffs and micro minis. I tend to think that we are all wanting to be what we thought was cool when we were just turning into teenagers. God help us.
None of this will be a surprise to commenters here, but I want to make a few more observations that I think link this to other things.
Wang’s first impulse was to simply avoid Lebrecht and it was only when Lebrecht wrote to her did she say anything. I don’t know the ins and outs of UK defamation law, but I hope that Lebrecht doesn’t decide to sooth his bruised ego by suing Wang, but I think if you go through Lebrecht’s previous writing, one might think that Wang let him off easy by simply avoiding the interview, but this was just too much of an insult to Norm and he had to make a snarky remark in his reply, a remark that cost him his job at BBC.
I see (and again, I may be overthinking this) a connection between this spat and Epstein. One thing we can see is an absence of Asian and Black names in the Epstein files. This NYTimes article points to one person, Joi Ito, who fell afoul of Epstein connections, but I’d argue that Joi Ito’s background is very unJapanese, and what that leads me to suggest is that while Epstein’s connections may have been influenced by Epstein’s preferences in girls/women, another component is that minorities might be better at recognizing the transactionality involved and avoided it. This recognition comes from being on the wrong side of the power dynamic.
I see a number of people writing about how Lebrecht’s behavior is misyogyny and kind of stop there. I think that gives a mistaken impression. Yes, misyogyny is there, but it is baked into the power relationships. There is more than a fair share of hatred of the young (telling that there is no single word that describes this, ageism is discrimination against older people) in Lebrecht’s actions, but I’m not precisely sure where you draw the line at someone being misyogynistic and someone thinking that these young-uns need to respect me.
Anyway, thoughts about this?
Perhaps this post by Lebrecht has something to do with it.
She doesn’t need him. He needs her. He’s a gossip and a hanger on, much like Jann Wenner.
I propose the portmanteau “gatecreeper” for this particular combination of self-importance and sexism. I do think he’s being sexist in his assumptions about Wang’s popularity and need for his legitimation.
Must hurt to both be this wrong and get sacked over it.
What a self-important little man.
Interesting pro bono. It looks like it was before the email tantrum and none of the pages I saw mentioned it. Makes it look even more egregious.
A few more thoughts, with pro bono’s link, it certainly pushes it over to sexism, had it only been the reposted message by Wang, I might have hesitated, but reading his wikipedia page, he seems like a real jerk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lebrecht
(don’t know why my wikipedia always has each reference on a different line)
Mentioned in the wikipedia page, but worth a read on its own is Hurwitz’s piece about him.
https://www.classicstoday.com/journalist-norman-lebrecht-dead-at-61/
Ouch!
There are people who can’t do an art but set themselves up as keepers of standards about that art, standards they present as Truth, rather than their own perspective. The same thing happens with visual art. The gatekeeper gets legitimacy by upholding convention and, thereby, the establishment (or those who consider themselves to be the establishment and have the power to act that way). The establishment that the gatekeeper represents probably has expectations for women which are in the standard. There may be more of a tolerance of men who deviate from the standard than women.
Interestingly, in terms of visual art, the convention is to be seen as unconventional, and the establishment loves the “outsider” that has been taken in as an insider.
I know I am over-simplifying. I think the dynamic I described exists but there are other dynamics as well. One is all the fans who ignore the gatekeepers and love the artists of their choice anyway. Another is commerce and marketing which can shower vast rewards on someone who is hated by the gatekeepers.
And, of course, there is such a thing as good and bad in any art. I just don’t think clothing choices count as part of the evaluation.
Perhaps more than you care to know about Norman Lebrecht.
“Ultimately, Norman Lebrecht’s reputation reflects the divided nature of classical music commentary today: a once-dominant voice whose sharp style secured attention and influence but whose methods have increasingly drawn scrutiny, culminating in the loss of his long-standing BBC platform. The evidence from peer reviews, legal records, artist statements, and public reactions points to a figure who remains widely discussed—yet more often as a cautionary example of boundary-pushing journalism than as an unchallenged authority.”
Norman Lebrecht: Polarizing Classical Music Figure