Crowds in Hanoi watch jumbo screens of Music Director Alan Gilbert leading the New York Philharmonic’s Vietnam debut, October 2009.
Chris Lee
Bridge O
Builders
by Jennifer Melick
Orchestras are expanding the definition of cultural diplomacy—at home
Young Iraqi musicians Honar Ali (left) and Rebin Ali (right) currently play on scholarship at the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra.
n a Friday evening just over a year ago, I sat inside the historic Hanoi Opera House in Vietnam, surrounded by government dignitaries, businessmen, music students, friends of the New York Philharmonic, and U.S. embassy officials, listening to the Philharmonic perform. Outside the sold-out house, even the city’s omnipresent motorbike riders stopped to watch the concert on screens set up for the occasion. The all-Beethoven program was followed by three encores, and, after several minutes of rhythmic clapping, the Egmont Overture, whose epic sweep seemed to satisfy the audience’s need for something grandiose and befitting the occasion. As a public symbol of reconciliation, it would be hard to find a better example than a Philharmonic concert
in Vietnam’s capital, uniting two countries formerly at war and now at peace. But for many people, the predominant recent memory of cultural diplomacy may be the New York Philharmonic’s groundbreaking February 2008 trip to North Korea. During the visit—covered by 100 journalists flown in for the occasion, and broadcast on U.S. television—the Philharmonic performed Gershwin, Dvorák, Wagner, Bizet, and Bernstein, plus the Korean folksong “Arirang.” The flags of the two countries, estranged since the Korean War and increasingly so during the past decade, were draped onstage. The Pyongyang visit was one of the biggest news stories of the year for an orchestra, and it still comes up in conversation, with symphony
WINTER 2011