Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...prolonged applause, New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel took to a podium in Pyongyang. And as he stood in front of a standing room only audience of about 1,400 people, it became clear quickly that the evening would be one of rare power and emotion. North Korean and U.S. flags stood at either end of the stage, and the entire audience rose as both nations' anthems were played. From that point on, for the next two hours, it was hard to remember that during the bus ride that afternoon, the members of the orchestra and the journalists accompanying...
When Maazel introduced George Gershwin's "An American in Paris" to the audience, he told them that perhaps one day another composer would write a famous symphony entitled "An American in Pyongyang." Whatever ambivalence the North Korean audience may have felt until then evaporated. The crowd laughed - and applauded long and hard. "From that point on," Maazel would later say, "you could just feel the warmth in the room." For the Korean audience, however, the most powerful piece was the one the orchestra played last: Arirang, a traditional Korean folk anthem loved in both North and South...
...will the journey be as momentous for the North Korean and American diplomats who will meet on the sidelines of this week's concert? Unlikely. Though the U.S. State Department has been resolutely (critics would say bizarrely) upbeat about the nuclear agreement Pyongyang signed in the so-called six-party talks last year, even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to temper the optimism surrounding the orchestra's visit. "The North Korean regime is the North Korean regime," she told reporters before attending the inauguration of South Korea's new President Lee Myung Bak in Seoul on Monday...
...already begun receiving shipments of desperately needed fuel oil under the February 2007 agreement - perhaps one of the reasons some of the lights did finally come on in downtown Pyongyang once the sun went down on the first day of the Philharmonic's visit - and there's more fuel on the way. Some diplomats in the region say Kim's behavior has been drearily predictable. As one describes it: "Agree to a deal, then fiddle around, backtrack - and then try to get even a better deal later: more energy assistance, more economic assistance...
...musicians, that is surely true enough. Unless Tehran someday beckons as the next stop in an "axis of evil" tour, there can be no stranger venue than Pyongyang for some of the world's finest musicians to play. The buses that transported the orchestra, staff and some 80 foreign journalists (three times the number that accompanied then Secretary of State Madeline Albright for her meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in late 2000) rolled past building after building that was unlit in the late afternoon gloom; pedestrians on the streets stared as the fleet of buses rolled into...