When star Chinese pianist Yuja Wang strode across the stage of the Hollywood Bowl last year for a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it was her body-hugging, bright orange minidress, and not the staggering virtuosity of her performance, that had the audience in a titter and provoked heated debate for months after the event. It was “so short and tight that had there been any less of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not accompanied by an adult”, leered LA Times music critic Mark Swed.

The 24-year-old Wang is no shrinking violet – wolf-whistling isn’t the usual response to a Rachmaninov concerto – but I doubt she expected the ensuing furore, in this day and age, over an above-the-knee dress at an oudoor summer concert.

Classical artists, male and female, should be as free to express themselves through their wardrobe as they are through their music. And for some artists’ press shots and album covers, that means no clothes at all; only their violins (and so often string players are the most eager to disrobe!) or other instruments to keep them warm. This is where good taste usually gets left crumpled on the floor in someone’s trouser pocket.

But it isn’t always a “sex sells” gimmick. Fiona Campbell is one of the rare few whose decision to bare all for her artform is backed by a carefully considered concept and sound artistic reasoning. On the cover of her new album Love + Loss (in stores February 15), the Australian mezzo-soprano finds herself stark naked in an elegant but vulnerable pose atop a marble boulder. Why? Campbell explains: “I wanted to do a classic nude for this album, because even though the music was written hundreds of years ago, the essence of human emotion is still contemporary.

“I wanted to show that this is a real woman, experiencing all the passion and tragedy of love and loss”.

In the images that follow, we reveal Fiona Campbell’s brave and beautiful album artwork, and celebrate artists getting their kit off in the name of classical music: the good, the bad and the just plain weird!

For the concerts that won her a Limelight Award in 2011, Fiona Campbell sped through one wardrobe change after the next to present four fabulous frocks and a sleek pants suit to the delighted audience – all this to depict the range of characters whose arias she sang. Now, for her first solo album Love + Loss, she takes the opposite approach: one that leaves her exposed in a frozen moment of austerity and contemplation. “To me, this image is a beautiful representation of all the emotions portrayed on the disc: love, solitude, abandonment, loss, sensuality and pathos,” she says.

This fine specimen is from a calendar: I call it Gambist sur l’herbe. Or should that be Gambists Gone Wild? In any event, it’s a rare case of a male musician getting undressed to… erm, impress.

Before the crossover quartet Bond threw the rule of “no skin, no skank” out the window, Lara St John was the real deal: the original sex-kitten string sensation. Her racy cover art caused a stir, but the controversial image of St John posing with a violin partially concealing her bare chest on her 1996 debut was intended as a reflection of the way unaccompanied Bach completely exposes the performer. She was one of Limelight‘s Top 12 Classical Music Pinups.

These heavenly harpists aren’t wearing so much as a smile.

Bill Hensen, eat your heart out! Australia’s Baroque trio Latitude 37 had considerable latitude on this photo shoot, giving new meaning to the phrase “intimate chamber music”. Violinist Julia Fredersdorff asserts they were trying to escape the “brown rice and sandals” image of early music and create a totally different identity for the group. I’d say they succeeded.

Another Australian, Jane Rutter, in a classic pose. The day of the recording session, she just rolled out of bed, grabbed her flute and away she went.

A classic joke album from 1962, released without an actual LP inside! It came instead with an insert that reads, “I bought this album for you as a gift… Sorry I couldn’t afford the record!” A great conversation piece in more ways than one.

“Before I bare my soul in these Verdi arias, I must first bare my chest…”

Two great examples of how the musicians don’t actually have to be on their own raunchy album cover:

Handel’s duets have never had a more titillating visual correlative, as we discovered in our Kookiest CD Covers of 2001 – 2010. The original painting, Gabrielle d’Estrés and one of her sisters in the bath (anonymous, c 1592) hangs in the Louvre.

The women from pages 2-9 of this article generously donated their undergarments for this clever image representing Bluebeard’s wives.

A cautionary word for musicians (and especially string players): even in a morally edifying artform like classical music, you can be fully clothed and still, inadvertently, be sexually suggestive. Just ask Joshua Bell!