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...New York Philharmonic's emotionally charged
debut performance in Pyongyang....The real magic came last.
" 'Arirang', 'Arirang',"
the North Koreans whispered to each other as the violins played the
opening notes. The people in the second and third circles leant forward
to watch over the ledge. The piccolo peeped the tune, the violins sang
languidly....Even as the musicians left the stage, the
applause continued for several minutes. As Mr Maazel and the concert
master returned to the empty stage, some North Koreans applauded over
their heads.
"It seemed they were being so friendly with us
through the music," said one North Korean woman in a peach-coloured
traditional dress, white handkerchief in her hand. "My favourite was
'Arirang'. I felt very moved."
[clip attached]
===
The
final strains of "Arirang", the heart-rending Korean folk song about
separation, had not even ended when the thumping applause started
filling the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre last night.
Middle-aged
men with purple-tinted glasses and women in traditional dress, visiting
South Korean sponsors and Manhattan matrons in fur, they all leapt to
their feet to celebrate the New York Philharmonic's emotionally charged
debut performance in Pyongyang.
It felt like history.
Expectations
were high for this trip, where the US's most prestigious orchestra went
to a country founded on hatred of America. Just as cultural exchanges
helped transform the US's relationship with China and the Soviet Union,
some hoped this would be the beginning of warmer relations, and perhaps
even détente, with North Korea. But few could have dared to hope the
performance would have been so well received.
From the start, the
concert was exceptional. On a stage flanked by North Korean and US
flags, the orchestra played "Aegukga", the North Korean national
anthem, and the "Star Spangled Banner". This would have been
unthinkable 18 months ago.
The New York Phil moved on to Dvorak's New World Symphony
. The applause was the kind of applause the audience might usually give
at a revolutionary opera about agricultural production. The mood
changed when Lorin Maazel, music director, turned to introduce the next
piece. "It is written by America's most well-known composer and it's
called An American in Paris ," he explained. "Some day a composer might write a work entitled Americans in Pyongyang."
The audience broke out into rapturous applause. The ice was broken. If this concert precipitates a thaw, it started here.
Unlike
with the Dvorak symphony, the members of the audience seemed to respond
to the Gershwin piece. Indeed, Dvorak and the like are de rigeur in
North Korea, but Gershwin is something else. The audience as a whole
suddenly seemed much more engaged.
Many North Koreans were quick
to join the standing ovation. And then the fireworks began. For the
encore, the orchestra played Leonard Bernstein's Candide , after which Mr Maazel explained the orchestra's special attachment to its former conductor.
"Imagine
Maestro Bernstein coming back and conducting once more," Mr Maazel
almost whispered. "Maestro, do me a favour," he said in Korean, backing
off the stage to leave the orchestra to play Bizet's Farandole without him.
The
sight of the empty green dais was spinetingling, especially given the
historical connotations: Bernstein led the Phil to the Soviet Union in
1959.
The real magic came last.
" 'Arirang', 'Arirang',"
the North Koreans whispered to each other as the violins played the
opening notes. The people in the second and third circles leant forward
to watch over the ledge. The piccolo peeped the tune, the violins sang
languidly.
As the piece closed, the applause was electric. And it
was put on full display something rarely seen in North Korea:
spontaneity.
The entire audience was on its feet, but this time
it was not just the women in traditional dress who were smiling, it was
the previously implacable bureaucrats too. They clapped, as the
orchestra bowed.
Even as the musicians left the stage, the
applause continued for several minutes. As Mr Maazel and the concert
master returned to the empty stage, some North Koreans applauded over
their heads.
"It seemed they were being so friendly with us
through the music," said one North Korean woman in a peach-coloured
traditional dress, white handkerchief in her hand. "My favourite was
'Arirang'. I felt very moved."
Mr Maazel was also clearly moved.
"It was a stunning, stunning reaction. We haven't seen that kind of
enthusiastic reaction in a long time, and we have had some very
successful concerts," he said after the concert. "When we saw that very
enthusiastic reaction, we thought that maybe it was mission
accomplished."
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
==
New York Times
Philharmonic Agrees to Play in North Korea
Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times
Lorin Maazel, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, conducted the orchestra in September.
Published: December 10, 2007
Adding a cultural wrinkle to the diplomatic engagement between the United States and North Korea, the New York Philharmonic plans to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in February, taking the legacy of Beethoven, Bach and Bernstein to one of the world’s most isolated nations.
The trip, at the invitation of North Korea, will be the first
significant cultural visit by Americans to that country, and it comes
as the United States is offering the possibility of warmer ties with a
country that President Bush once consigned to the “axis of evil.”
“We
haven’t even had Ping-Pong diplomacy with these people,” said
Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, the Bush administration’s main diplomat
for negotiations with North Korea and the assistant secretary of state
for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Just last week Mr. Bush sent a letter to Kim Jong-il,
North Korea’s leader, suggesting that ties would improve if North Korea
fully disclosed all nuclear programs and got rid of its nuclear
weapons. Conservatives have criticized the Bush administration for
engaging with North Korea when it has violated nuclear promises, and in
the face of recent intelligence indicating its possible assistance to
Syria in beginning work on a reactor.
State Department officials
said the orchestra’s invitation from North Korea and its acceptance
represented a potential opening in that Communist nation’s relationship
with the outside world, and a softening of its unrelenting anti-United
States propaganda.
“It would signal that North Korea is beginning
to come out of its shell, which everyone understands is a long-term
process,” Mr. Hill said. “It does represent a shift in how they view
us, and it’s the sort of shift that can be helpful as we go forward in
nuclear weapons negotiations.”
The Philharmonic’s trip, which has
generated some controversy among orchestra musicians and commentators,
will follow a venerable line of groundbreaking orchestra tours that
have played a role in diplomacy, the most famous one, perhaps, taking
place in 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra traveled to China soon after President Nixon’s historic visit and amid what came to be known as Ping-Pong diplomacy. In 1956 the Boston Symphony was the first major American orchestra to travel to the Soviet Union. The New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein, went three years later.
Of
the Philharmonic’s excursion, Mr. Hill said, “I hope it will be looked
back upon as an event that helped bring that country back into the
world.”
The Philharmonic, led by its music director, Lorin Maazel,
has been considering the visit since an invitation arrived by fax in
August. It was a typed letter from the North Korean culture ministry,
in English, accompanied by a cover letter from a private individual in
California who said he was acting as an intermediary. The orchestra had
the invitation authenticated by the State Department, which has
provided advice and help in negotiating the terms of the visit. Mr.
Hill said that he did not know how the invitation had come about. But
its timing was significant, after a series of breakthroughs in a
decade-long effort to have North Korea halt its nuclear program.
In February North Korea agreed to shut down its main reactor in
exchange for economic aid and other inducements. The reactor was
switched off in July, a month before the invitation. And in September
the Bush administration said that North Korea had agreed to disable its
main nuclear fuel plant and give an accounting of its nuclear
facilities, fuel and weapons by the end of the year. Progress toward
the Philharmonic’s visit accelerated when orchestra executives and a
State Department official visited Pyongyang in October.
The final
major logistical pieces of the concert fell into place late last week,
after a visit to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, by Zarin Mehta,
the orchestra’s president. The Philharmonic’s spokesman, Eric Latzky,
confirmed that the trip was on, but he declined to discuss details
publicly until a news conference at Avery Fisher Hall tomorrow, when it
is to be formally announced.
Mr. Hill, who was in Pyongyang last
week delivering Mr. Bush’s letter and inspecting nuclear facilities,
said he planned to attend the news conference. He has spoken privately
to the orchestra members. Even more surprising, the Philharmonic said
that Pak Kil-yon, North Korea’s representative to the United Nations,
would also attend, a rare public appearance by a North Korean diplomat.
Mr. Hill said he believed that the conditions sought by the
Philharmonic had been met. They included the presence of foreign
journalists; a nationwide broadcast to ensure that not just a small
elite would hear the concert; acoustical adjustments to the East
Pyongyang Grand Theater; an assurance that the eight Philharmonic
members of Korean origin would not encounter difficulties; and that the
orchestra could play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Once the
orchestra members had given their approval, the major stumbling block
became transportation. The orchestra, staff members and journalists are
expected to number about 250. A plane that can also carry the many
large instruments had to be found. Asiana Airlines, a South Korean
carrier, offered such a plane, provided that financing could be
secured, said Evans Revere, a former senior United States diplomat who
is president of the Korea Society, which helped plan the visit.
MBC,
one of three main broadcasters in South Korea, offered to pay for the
charter in exchange for the rights to broadcast an extra concert by the
Philharmonic in Seoul on its return from Pyongyang, Mr. Revere said.
“The
balance that’s being achieved here is pretty nifty,” he said. “It’s a
nice message being sent to the peninsula that the premier American
orchestra is performing in both capitals within hours of each other.”
One
of the remaining loose ends is the procurement of climate-controlled
trucks to transport instruments to and from the airport. One
possibility is arranging for South Korean trucks to be driven across
the border. The North Korean government can be unpredictable, and there
is always the possibility that the visit could be derailed.
The
concert is planned for Feb. 26 at the end of a previously planned tour
in China. The orchestra is expected to stay in Pyongyang for two
nights, with some teaching and a ceremonial dinner thrown in.
Some
questions have been raised about the appropriateness of visiting a
country run by one of the world’s most repressive governments. North
Korea’s policies have been blamed in part for the famine-related
starvation of perhaps two million people and it confines hundreds of
thousands of people in labor camps.
If the orchestra goes to
Pyongyang, “it will be doing little more than participating in a puppet
show whose purpose is to lend legitimacy to a despicable regime,” Terry Teachout, an arts critic and blogger, wrote on the online opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal in late October.
Richard V. Allen, a national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan,
and Chuck Downs — both board members of the United States Committee for
Human Rights in North Korea — made a similar point on Oct. 28 on the
Op-Ed page of The New York Times. “It would be a mistake to hand Kim
Jong-il a propaganda coup,” they wrote.
Mr. Hill acknowledged
that “in a very theoretical way” any kind of opening lends legitimacy
to the North Korean government. “But not opening up has not had any
positive effect in bringing North Korea out of its shell,” he said.
Mr.
Latzky declined to discuss the concert program, but orchestra officials
have said from the beginning that it would probably include American
music.
Most foreigners in Japan could be forgiven for not
knowing of Dick Lee. But throughout Asia, from Thailand to Taipei and, yes, Tokyo, Lee is
as much a star as Madonna or Michael Jackson. At the beginning of the 1990s he was
releasing critically acclaimed albums such as The Mad Chinaman, winning awards and
performing to capacity crowds in every major city across Asia. Lee was making music with a
message and was obsessed with his search to find a sound that was uniquely Asian, that
wasn't simply mimicking Western artists. 
"It's all superficial. Underneath all the fashion
and the Western look they are all very traditional Japanese, who all can't speak English,
yet they have this very Western attitude. But it is just attitude." 
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