The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Yuja Wang: "Me Too is stupid"

2021-08-03T03:51:21.856Z


The pianist, who went from child prodigy in China to star in the United States, confesses that she spent a good part of the pandemic without playing, criticizes the "persecution" against Woody Allen and says that she has given up understanding her country


Yuja Wang (Beijing, 34 years old) appears in the dressing room after having lunch with Liszt on the stage of the Kursaal (San Sebastián) with her stiletto heel and her spontaneous laugh.

She was a child prodigy, she left China at the age of 14 to become a piano star in the United States and she did it.

Play this Tuesday in Santander after opening the San Sebastian Fortnight with the Luxembourg Orchestra and the Spanish conductor Gustavo Gimeno.

He has undergone an undisciplined confinement regarding his piano and believes that the egalitarian and anti-sexist movements in the culture are a form of censorship against some of his gods, such as Woody Allen, for example.

More information

  • A piano cyclone named Yuja Wang

  • The digital pianist

Question.

Liszt had a wild fan club.

Some women were buried with a remnant of their cigar between their breasts, the legends say.

He has just performed his

Concert number 1

in San Sebastián.

Is it sensual or sexual music?

Answer.

Liszt was an alpha male who seduced with emotion.

Although I like Chopin more, in Liszt I find a fierce sense of freedom.

It is bright, sparkling.

He uses the character of the music very well.

Their first concert may sound a bit empty to some, but it is a lot of fun to play and to flirt with the music.

Q.

What technique do you use to cope with that stiletto heel and piano pedals?

R.

Well, realize that I am short.

But I'm not going to tell you how long they are.

I like it and I'm used to it.

I'm not talking about my heels.

Let's continue with Liszt, what interests me a lot is the last stage of his life, when he became religious.

Q.

Is it happening to you?

Have you become religious?

A.

Not yet ...

P.

Well then ...

A.

I am an agnostic.

I don't know if God exists.

But just because she has a spiritual sense of life doesn't mean she's religious.

I do things with all my soul: I play with all my soul, I live the same and as with all my soul put in the senses.

And more if I am in San Sebastián.

You can be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and ask yourself the same thing: where am I going, who am I, what is the meaning of all this.

Yes, I guess having faith in something is important.

Q.

For a girl who leaves China alone at the age of 14 to study in the United States, so far from her country, these questions must have become commonplace.

R.

They have intensified in recent times, with the pandemic, when I spent so much time alone in New York.

I was in my house, 34th floor of a tall building, and I felt like I was 14 years old again.

Somehow I appreciated it, because in the maelstrom you always ask yourself that you want to stop but you can't.

In that sense it was inevitable, there was no other remedy.

I wondered if I had really learned anything in all these years.

I haven't played a single key in a year.

I didn't play a single key in a year

Q.

Didn't you miss it?

R.

Not a single day!

I watched all of Netflix, I read, I ate like a seal and I drank, I got fat ... I realized that I had a lot of capacity to endure all that.

So until I got bored, but the truth is that I really enjoyed it.

I like extremes, but maybe I should find a place in between.

Although the truth is that the moment when I returned to play in public I enjoyed it so much that I had not been aware of how much I missed it.

I was surprised.

Q.

It seems that you get on well with the Luxembourg Orchestra and with Gustavo Gimeno as conductor.

R

.

Well, actually he told me that I am the pianist he argued with the most.

But apart from the fact that he is a very handsome Spaniard ...

Q.

Oh my God!

If I asked him and he answered that about you like this, we would sink him.

R.

No, no, no, sorry ... I love his way of making music and the orchestra team, but I like him to say yes when he knows I'm right.

He is humble, generous and shows that the important thing is the music, not our egos.

He knows I amuse him.

Musically I am deflowering him in a certain sense: with me he has made his first concert of Liszt, Mozart and Ravel.

He's using me a lot for that ...

Q.

Since we get into the subject, how is the MeToo movement in classical music?

R.

Look, between that and other racial movements around culture, I want to say that I am not going to lament or blame others for my own unhappiness.

It's sad.

But for whom I most regret this is because of what happened to Woody Allen, for example.

For that persecution against him.

We can't even see his latest movie in America!

This is how we close doors to culture.

Why kill him without solid evidence?

It reminds me of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Q.

A type of censorship?

A.

I think Me Too is stupid.

If you don't want to hook up with someone, you turn them down, period.

But I don't know if I should say this ...

We feel the lack of freedom anywhere, just use a phone and you lose it

Q.

A month ago I heard Javier Gomá, a Spanish philosopher, say that the Chinese regime will soon fall: the richer people get, the greater degree of freedom they will ask for.

What do you think?

R.

We feel the lack of freedom anywhere, just use a phone and lose it.

I have not returned to live there.

I neither understood China then nor do I understand it now, its size scares me.

Q.

And you don't want to make the effort to try to understand?

A.

It would be too much effort.

And besides, I'm learning German ...

Discover the best stories of the summer in

V Magazine

.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2021-08-03

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.