Category: music

The New York Philharmonic’s visit to North Korea might have made worldwide headlines, but in North Korea it got scant mention. The newspaper report on the concert was heavy on who among the North’s elite attended and called the concert “very sophisticated and sensitive.”

“Like Balanchine, Stravinsky was considered famously hard really to know; unlike Balanchine, he labored to explain himself. His notorious aversion to “interpretations” of his music, any and all of which distorted its meaning, paralleled larger areas of purported misunderstanding. To better explain himself, he would write lengthy letters to established scholars or obscure students.”

“We have not completely closed the door on our dream of a concert hall, but at this time it wouldn’t be fair nor right to request additional time.”

The magazine’s critic reviewed a recording he hadn’t heard. The magazine said: “It is Maxim’s editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers.”

There’s “the idea that we, the noble West, are going to bring the good things of classical music to the benighted North Koreans. This attitude is all too familiar in classical music in general: It is the same well-meaning approach that gives so many outreach programs their tinge of benevolent didacticism, the tone of a conductor speaking cheerfully on a podium to educate his or her audience. And another problem with this argument is that, like many opinions, it is not informed by facts. For there is evidence that North Korea does actually have a considerable music life.”

Unlike the live monthly broadcasts by the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera’s digital screenings – co-presented with the distribution company The Bigger Picture – are pre-recorded during performances in the War Memorial Opera House, and will be edited in the Koret-Taube Media Suite, the company’s high-tech production facility.

“The emotional setting took a turn away from the political theme that had dominated the visit, which began Monday and ends Wednesday when the orchestra flies to Seoul, the South Korean capital, for a concert. It was the first time a major American cultural organization had appeared here, and the largest contingent of United States citizens since the Korean War.”

A music-lover settles in front of his computer in London to watch the live-streaming of the New York Philharmonic’s concert in North Korea. But all was not as advertised…

“The orchestra’s heavily choreographed visit — to include master classes, tours of the town and a concert on Tuesday night — is the first hint of a broader thaw in a half-century long cultural standoff.”