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In North Korea, Breaking a Barrier With Sound
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That, at least, is what Maazel, speaking to reporters just a few hours before the concert, had enthusiastically said would happen.
But the North Koreans did not appear. After the concert, Maazel was asked why. He said that he had simply changed his mind. The president of the orchestra, Zarin Mehta, said the North Korean government had had no influence on the decision.
Another curious no-show occurred before the concert. The North Korean vice minister of culture, Song Sok Hwan, had announced that he would meet with Western reporters traveling with the orchestra.
A room near the concert hall was set up with cameras and microphones and it soon filled with Western journalists. Without explanation from the government, Song did not appear before reporters, who would have asked him to explain why the country's leader was skipping the concert.
On Tuesday morning, as the orchestra held a dress rehearsal, government officials known among the visitors as "minders" took reporters by bus on a tour of Pyongyang that appeared to involve fakery.
The primary event of the tour was a walk-about inside a vast concrete monolith called the Grand People's Study House.
Part library, part lecture center and part showcase for statues and paintings of Kim father and son, the building was shown off as a "grand palace" for higher learning that is "completely free" to North Koreans. (Reporters were asked to pay $4.)
In Reading Room No. 3, devoted to social science texts, tour guide Hye Yong explained how the late Kim Il Sung (known here as the "Great Leader") had personally designed the room's study desks. "The Great Leader gave on-the-spot guidance here for height and angle of desk," she said.
More than 10,000 people come daily to the Grand People's Study House to read books, attend lectures, listen to music and surf the North Korean "Intranet," a data source controlled by the state, Hye said.
Although the country does not allow ordinary citizens to use the Internet, Hye said access was coming "soon."
During the press tour of a dozen or so of the 600 rooms in the Grand People's Study House, it slowly became apparent that something odd was going on.
Several hundred people had spontaneously chosen to attend various classes and lectures on Tuesday, Hye explained. But almost none of these citizens budged from their seats during the hour or so that the foreign reporters were wandering around in the building.
