The sound of freedom in North Korea

I admit I had some misgivings early this year when I read that the New York Philharmonic had accepted an invitation to perform a concert in North Korea. I thought the orchestra would be, as arts critic Terry Teachout put it, “participating in a puppet show” that would help give an aura of legitimacy to the repressive regime in Pyongyang and its mercurial (to put it politely) dictator, Kim Jong-il, who is officially known as “Dear Leader.” But after watching PBS’ delayed broadcast of the Feb. 26 concert, I think the Philharmonic and its backers did the right thing.

The broadcast presented a frank, critical view of North Korea, with segments narrated by Bob Woodruff of ABC painting a stark picture of life in that austere, obsessively insular society. We saw 3-year-olds brainwashed with nursery tunes glorifying Dear Leader; empty high-rise buildings built for show with elevators that don’t work; the Arrival/Departure board at the airport with only one flight listed; the national obsession with racial purity; robotic adults parroting boilerplate language of unthinking, unreasoned hatred for Americans. It is, in essence, like a gigantic religious cult.

The concert program itself was obviously designed to convey certain messages to the audience. The Philharmonic insisted on having the final say over the music played, as well as requiring a nationwide broadcast so that all North Koreans could hear it.

With Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony – a work by a Czech composer living in Iowa using themes inspired by Native American and African melodies – the orchestra portrayed the vitality of an open society embracing various cultures. Likewise, Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” showed the swirl of urban energy and color that a mingling of influences – American jazz and French dance-hall tunes – can create, except in societies like North Korea.

But Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” Overture, drenched with Voltaire’s satiric view of “best of all possible worlds,” took the prize. The orchestra performed it without a conductor. That was meant as a tribute to the late Bernstein, a gesture not unlike the riderless horse at a military funeral. But its deeper symbolism, we can perhaps hope, affected at least some of the North Koreans who watched the performance:

A free people, free to develop their own talents and follow their own paths, are perfectly capable of working together without a leader – “Dear” or otherwise – telling them how to act, what to think and how to express themselves.