The Sight of Music in North Korea

This blog is supposed to be about photography, but the topic of this post is basically music. Well, there is a video angle, but it’s pretty tangential. Hope you’ll forgive me for stretching the boundaries a little. I got to watch the PBS presentation of the New York Philharmonic’s concert in North Korea the other night, and I was very moved by it. It wasn’t necessarily the politics surrounding the event that seem remarkable, but the music itself. I’ve heard Rhapsody in Blue a million times, but it sounded so powerful, so convincing. The highlight was the concert-ending performance of Arirang, the popular Korean folk song. The video of that is below. If you want to see a New York Time slide show (photos by Chang W. Lee) on the orchestra’s trip, go here.–David Schonauer