What Not to Think About the Philharmonic Concert By TERRY TEACHOUT March 1, 2008; Page W16 Now that the New York Philharmonic has paid its long-awaited visit to North Korea, the floodtide of justificatory gush has begun. Lorin Maazel, the orchestra's music director, intoned that "in the world of music, all men and women are brothers and sisters." A South Korean newspaper described the trip as "an overture to peace between the North and the United States." The Los Angeles Times called it "a publicity coup for an institution . . . much in need of a lift." And Eric Clapton says he's been invited to play in Pyongyang.
Eric Clapton?
Things are starting to get a little silly here. So before any more 62-year-old rock stars decide to hop the next plane to Pyongyang, allow me to point out five mistaken ideas about the Philharmonic's concert:
- The fact that the audience responded warmly to the concert proves that it was a good idea. "We just went out and did our thing," Mr. Maazel told reporters, "and we began to feel this warmth coming back. . . . I think it's going to do a great deal." Bunk. All it proves is that apparatchiks can be sentimental, too, a fact that the Wagner-loving Adolf Hitler proved long ago. Every North Korean who was permitted to attend that concert was undoubtedly vetted by Kim Jong Il's secret police. No wonder they wept when they heard the Philharmonic play their national anthem. End of story.
- Any direct contact between North Korea and the U.S. is by definition desirable. Not if it makes things worse for the North Koreans -- and it may. Kim Cheol-woong, a musician who defected from Pyongyang to the West in 2001, warned the Journal's Melanie Kirkpatrick that "there will be educational sessions . . . [on] the triumph of Kim Jong Il's political leadership, which resulted in the fact that even the American artistic group is coming to knock their foreheads on the floor in front of General Kim."
- Even if only a handful of North Korean musicians heard the concert and found it inspiring, it was worth giving. Really? Are musicians more important than "ordinary" North Koreans? Remember that North Korea is a tightly shuttered society. All that its people know about the concert is what Kim tells them. Will they see the Philharmonic's visit as a beacon of hope, or proof that their Dear Leader is so powerful that the Americans come running when he crooks his little finger?
As for the handful of North Korean musicians who were allowed to meet with the members of the Philharmonic, they did so under the severest of constraints. A quartet of Americans led by Glenn Dicterow, the orchestra's concertmaster, rehearsed the Mendelssohn Octet with four young North Korean string players and found their performance "attuned and sensitive." But Daniel J. Wakin reported in the New York Times that they "exchanged few words" with their American counterparts -- and that the moment the performance was over, "the North Koreans quickly left the area. . . . At the end the four Americans received bouquets, and Mr. Dicterow tried to hand his to the North Korean next to him. The player refused it." If you're wondering why, I suggest you read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" to learn what happens to people under totalitarian rule who make the deadly mistake of talking to foreign visitors.
- People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. So said Mr. Maazel in response to charges that the Philharmonic had agreed to play for a monster who starves and jails his own people en masse. "Is our reputation all that clean when it comes to prisoners and the way they are treated?" he asked before leaving for Asia. "Have we set an example that should be emulated all over the world? If we can answer that question honestly, I think we can then stop being judgmental about the errors made by others." In other words, the U.S. is morally equivalent to a country thought to have imprisoned some 150,000 North Koreans in Soviet-style prison camps.
That notion is beneath contempt.
- Great art can change the world. As for Mr. Clapton, he would do well to lend an ear to his fellow rocker Neil Young. "I think that the time when music could change the world is past," Mr. Young recently said. "I think it would be very naïve to think that in this day and age." Indeed it would, but far too many artists are just that naïve, not to mention vain (which makes one wonder exactly why Mr. Young is joining with Bruce Springsteen in contributing songs to the soundtrack album of the forthcoming antiwar film "Body of War"). Clement Greenberg, the great art critic, called such foolish folk "art-silly," going on to issue the following warning: "Art solves nothing, either for the artist himself or for those who receive his art." Least of all does it have the power to tear down the high walls of tyranny -- or to feed the terror-stricken people of North Korea.
Irene Breslau, a member of the Philharmonic's viola section, got it right on the nose: "I've had a lot of moral reservations based on wondering what a concert for the elite is going to do to help the people starving in the street," she told the Associated Press. Too bad Ms. Breslau's bosses didn't ask themselves that question before sending her to Pyongyang.
