The Economist has an interesting article in this week's issue about the New York Philharmonic's recent trip to North Korea. The author discusses "musical diplomacy" as an intriguing form of soft balancing: even without formal political gestures, orchestras have made diplomatic inroads in previously hostile areas (witness the Boston Symphony in the Soviet Union in 1956, or the Philadelphia Orchestra in Beijing in 1973).
The question, of course, is exactly the one asked by the author: is this really a significant form of diplomacy, or are American orchestras simply playing to the tunes of intractable nondemocratic regimes?
And, on a lighter note, watch The Colbert Report interview with Lorin Maazel, conductor of the NY Philharmonic...
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