New York Philharmonic - The Pyongyang Concert (DVD)

The New York Philharmonic's historic trip to North Korea in 2008 was the first-ever performance by a U.S. orchestra within the borders of the secretive state. The concert recorded here became a surprisingly emotional musical event. Music became diplomacy when conductor Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic, the USA’s most eminent orchestra, opened the concert in East Pyongyang’s Grand Theatre with both the American and the North Korean national anthems. The program included music by Wagner, Dvor(ák, Gershwin, Bizet and Bernstein and prompted the North Korean audience to standing ovations in an outpouring of appreciation and warmth on both sides of the proscenium.

This courageous musical project also united Korean and American musicians, who, together, produced a technically brilliant performance. The musicians barely spoke to one another, communicating in exchanged glances and body language, and when Lorin Maazel raised his baton at the end of the concert and the orchestra embarked on ‘Arirang,’ a lilting folk song emblematic of the North and South Korean people, the audience was obviously touched. A previously unreleased documentary with 53 min of exclusive material shows members of the New York Philharmonic on their historic trip to North Korea's capital. Many concerns and doubts arose before departing to the most inaccessible country in the world – a country that consistently violates human rights laws and that has been categorised by George Bush as part of the “axis of evil”. The concert recording and the documentary, however, present no political manifestos. Instead they show people who are brought a little closer by virtue of music. Music knows no borders and can touch hearts and unite people everywhere – this release provides impressive proof.

Program:
1. Lohengrin: Act 3 Prelude by Richard Wagner
2. Symphony no 9 in E minor, Op. 95/B 178 "From the New World" by Antonín Dvorák
3. An American in Paris by George Gershwin
4. L'arlésienne Suite no 2: 4th movement, Farandole by Georges Bizet
5. Candide: Overture by Leonard Bernstein
6. Arirang (Traditional)

Bonus:
Documentary "Americans in Pyongyang" The New York Philharmonic's Trip to North Korea

Media: DVD 9
Scans: cover+booklet (cover is scanned photocopy)
Runtime: 107 mins + 52 mins (Documentary)
Size: 7.33 GB (3% Recovery)
Video: Untouched (no compression)
Type: Interlaced MPEG2
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Region Code: 0 All Regions
TV System: NTSC
Audio: DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0, 5.1
Language: English
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese
Menus: Untouched (Menus are in English)
Format: VIDEO_TS Folder
Studio: Euroarts
DVD Release Date: 2008
Note: 3% Recovery is included in archives to repair corrupted downloads