Making Overtures

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North Korean audience wait for the New York Philharmonic orchestra to play during their inaugural performance in the North Korea capital, Pyongyang on February 26, 2008

Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images

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The New York Philharmonic (NYP) concert last February at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre — a recording of which has just been released on DVD by Medici Arts — began with a welcome from a comely young North Korean woman in traditional dress. She expressed the hope that the performance would "herald the first step in rapprochement between the two countries," just before the esteemed orchestra entered the stately 2,500-seat auditorium.

Under the baton of Lorin Maazel, the evening's program began with both national anthems and included Dvorak's New World Symphony and Gershwin's An American in Paris. The latter was played by the NYP with suitable pluck, its feverish honks and unbridled gusto trenchantly counterpointing North Korea's stagnation.

Some fleeting personal connections were made during the evening. Several NYP members, in an accompanying documentary, recall waving to the audience and having their gestures instinctively returned. "Something had happened," recollects violist Rebecca Young.

But on a grander scale, can bowstring diplomacy achieve anything? American orchestras have been musical ambassadors before. The Boston Symphony Orchestra played the Soviet Union in 1956, but the Cold War dragged on for decades. The Philadelphia Orchestra played Beijing in 1973, yet formal relations between the two nations weren't established until 1979. Even if you watch the NYP's Pyongyang adventure in slo-mo, you won't spot Kim Jong Il making nuclear concessions in a balcony suite while seduced by the universal language of music (he didn't attend). But at least you will see, at the concert's close, rows of North Koreans quietly moved by a poignant rendition of Arirang, the Korean folk tune beloved on both sides of the DMZ, and a touching song whose harps and violins are borderless. Perhaps rapprochement can start from there.