Symphonic diplomacy: Rappahannock’s resident maestro conducts musical opening to North Korea
By James P. Gannon
In a move reminiscent of the “ping-pong diplomacy” that led to the historic thaw in U.S.-China relations under President Richard Nixon, music has opened a door to the closed society of Communist North Korea, with a Rappahannock County resident wielding the baton.
Under the direction of conductor Lorin Maazel, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra played an historic concert in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Tuesday. Maazel, who lives in Castleton when he is not traveling the world or conducting in New York, led the 130-member orchestra in a performance that produced a five-minute standing ovation at its end.
According to media reports of the event, this was the largest contingent of U.S. citizens to visit the isolated Stalinist society since the Korean War, more than a half-century ago.
The historic significance of the event remains to be seen, but it has a parallel in the early 1970s, when the first opening to Communist China came in the visit of the U.S. Table Tennis team to that country in April 1971. This “ping-pong diplomacy” led to Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, which opened a new chapter in the previously frozen relationship between the United States and China.
After the concert, Maazel was optimistic that this symphonic diplomacy might prove as important as the ping-pong of Nixon’s era, according to reports of American journalists accompanying the orchestra.
“Little could we know that we would be drawn into orbit by this stunning reaction,” Maazel told reporters after the concert, according to The Washington Post. “I think it is going to do a great deal for Korean-U.S. relations. We may have been instrumental in opening a little door.”
Asked if he was disappointed that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, had not attended the concert, Maazel snapped back: “I have yet to see the president of the United States at one of my concerts. Sometimes politicians are too busy.”
The concert was carried live on national television and radio in North Korea–a highly unusual move in a dictatorship that controls all news media, publishing and communications.
On Monday, the orchestra and acoompanying journalists were given a government-controlled tour of the capital city. Later, Maazel and his musicians were hosted for a dinner at the People’s Palace of Culture, where the maestro gave a toast expressing “friendly feelings to North Korean artists and the North Korean people,” according to press reports.
Maazel, who will be 78 next month, is completing his final season as musical director of the Philharmonic, where he assumed leadership in 2002. The orchestra is completing a two-week tour of Asia in which it visited five cities and performed a dozen concerts–none so memorable or diplomatically significant as the symphonic outreach in Pyongyang.
-- James P. GannonComments
Comment from nolp
Time: February 26, 2008, 6:56 pm
I know it is “only” music … but what little I saw of the performance gave me goose bumps. It looked as though both the audience and the orchestra felt the same.
–Nol Putnam
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