NY Philharmonic Plays North Korea

Some of the best music and musicians in the country will be playing in the capital city of North Korea:

PYONGYANG, North Korea — The New York Philharmonic arrived in North Korea on Monday on a historic trip as the most prominent American cultural institution to visit the nuclear-armed country, run by a regime that keeps its impoverished people among the world's most isolated.

North Korea made unprecedented accommodations for the orchestra, allowing a delegation of nearly 300 people, including musicians, staff and journalists to fly into Pyongyang on a chartered plane for 48 hours.

The Philharmonic's concert Tuesday will be broadcast live on North Korea's state-run TV and radio, unheard of in a country where all events are carefully choreographed to bolster the personality cult of leader Kim Jong Il.

The Philharmonic accepted the North's invitation to play last year, with the encouragement of the U.S. government, at a time of rare optimism in the long-running nuclear standoff involving the two countries. ...

The concert will feature Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 and "An American in Paris" by George Gershwin. Among the encores planned is the Korean folk song "Arirang" — beloved in both the North and South.

The performance will begin with the orchestra playing both countries' national anthems, and the U.S. and North Korean flags will stand together on stage, said the Philharmonic's president and executive director, Zarin Mehta.

Ahead of their arrival, North Korea was even tearing down the anti-American posters that line the streets of Pyongyang, Mehta said Sunday, citing a diplomat based there who briefed the orchestra before its departure from Beijing, the last stop on a tour of the greater China region.

Such posters typically portray iron-faced North Korean soldiers with rifles poised to strike cowering Americans or crushing Washington's Capitol dome, the U.S. flag in tatters.

Mehta told reporters Monday before leaving Beijing that politics was not part of the trip.

"We are going to do master classes. We'll do chamber music, rehearsals ... that's what we're there for. Politics is not our game. We play music," he said.

How are you going to keep them down in Pyongyang after they've heard the NY Phil?