Posted on 02/26/2008 4:57:17 AM PST by AmericanInTokyo
Just happened a few hours ago in brutal communist North Korea's capital, Pyongyang.
The New York Philharmonic.
CLICK HERE, THEN UNDER THE SINGER'S PHOTO, HIT PLAY
Be patient as it loads. May not be viewable on all PCs.
bookmark. Hope that’s still up when I get home tonight. Maybe someone can capture the stream and save it.
There are a lot of restrictions on the government network but pretty much none on the one at "home." I'll just do it from there. :)
Philharmonic plays US anthem in N. Korea
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080226/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_ny_philharmonic
Yeah, I saw it on the tube earlier. Definitely no "lowly" workers in that audience. All big party members.
AMAZING! PHILHARMONIC PLAYS US ANTHEM IN N. KOREA! TRENDSETTING! TRUE!!
OMG no change this .. Hey Obama is this the kind of Change you are selling?
When our jazz band toured communist Romania in 1974, we played both anthems over 20 times all over their country, as did all the musical groups that toured. As it turned out, Romania had the most vicious regime of the eastern bloc.
With all this good will around, maybe the NK’s will finally return the USS Pueblo. Just as a symbol of good will, ya know. I know I’m just dreaming of that happening.
That was one of the best rendentions of the U.S. National Anthem I have ever heard. The orchestra must have played it with a little extra zest to show who’s the best.
The offerings were the anthems of the two countries and after ours, there was a standing O. The program included The New World Symphony by Dvorak which is a symphonic "picture" of our country.
Gershwin's "American in Paris" was also on the program, a truly great achievement by an American composer.
The theater where the concert was performed holds 2500 seats. The men patrons wore business suits and many women wore traditional Korean attire. There's no evidence that the audience was made up of high communist apparatchiks. There is a middle and upper class in major NK cities as in most countries. When I go to the opera or a concert in this country and look around, I don't see any "day laborers" or "workers of the world" types, either. I see pretty well-heeled-looking folks.
Whether we politicize this concert or not is up to each of us. I look at it as undercutting the dictatorship and bringing a couple nights of musical pleasure to those who hunger for it. Great music by great composers is what it is no matter where it's played.
The orchestra received a prolonged standing ovation at concert end. It was a musically-profound evening for the audience, not an American Tragedy.
Leni
Damn you! Now I have to go watch the movie again!
Saw on the news this morning that Eric Clapner (Clapton to everyone but Jocelyn Elders) is next to perform there.
This was my contemporaneous report on the concert. I sent a series of e-mails to my relatives giving them a blow by blow account, as follows:
I know you would appreciate this. It’s 3:30 a.m. and I’m still awake, and glad of it. On CNN right now, they are broadcasting the live performance of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra playing, for the first time ever, in Pyongyang, North Korea, with both nation’s flags on either side of the stage. They opened by playing first the NK anthem and then the US anthem. Right now they are playing Dvorak’s 9th Symphony (I love Dvorak). It is a beautiful performance and the NK audience seems enraptured. Lot’s of soft smiles and pleased looks. The music has to touch everyone there as it is so lovely. Lorin Maazel is conducting. This will probably do more for relations than many other steps that could be taken. The performance is also being broadcast live over NK TV and radio, so it is reaching the whole country, unheard of possibility before this. A brief, momentary thaw in a seemingly implacable situation otherwise. Hopefully the thaw will hold more than a fleeting moment in time.
Now the NY Philharmonic is playing Gershwin’s American in Paris, in Pyongyang. How perfect! The conductor just cracked a joke that maybe one day they would be playing An American in Pyongyang. It went over well. The audience was laughing. That’s all.
P.S., the concert started out with the Swan Knight part of Wagner’s Lohengrin, which was also lovely. Ok, to bed now.
I forgot one other e-mail I sent about the concert as it was happening:
At the very end of the concert, after playing a part of Candide, by Leonard Bernstein, the NY Philharmonic played a beautiful NK folk song called Arirang. It was just so plaintively beautiful (about a lover who can’t let go). It is their national folk song that all NK’s know by heart. The whole concert was a rousing success and I hope they put it on DVD or CD, because I know I’d be one of the first to buy it. So glad I tripped over this on CNN and didn’t miss this historic concert. Bravo, bravo, bravo!
Leni
Kim Cheol-woong, a North Korean pianist who defected to South Korea in 2002 because of the lack of musical freedom, said last week that regular citizens in the North were prohibited from listening to or playing foreign music produced after 1900.Who knows, maybe they will start to allow jazz music now too.
Gershwin was an excellent choice. Almost as good as The Star Spangled Banner
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