Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Lorin Maazel explains the decision of the New York Philharmonic to perform in North Korea. He says some important things about the West’s role in defending human rights. He talks about his experiences behind the Iron Curtain and says some important things about the role arts can play:
I have always believed that the arts, per se, and their exponents, artists, have a broader role to play in the public arena. But it must be totally apolitical, nonpartisan and free of issue-specific agendas. It is a role of the highest possible order: bringing peoples and their cultures together on common ground, where the roots of peaceful interchange can imperceptibly but irrevocably take hold. If all goes well, the presence of the New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang might gently influence the perception of our country there. If we are gradually to improve U.S.-Korean relations, such events have the potential to nudge open a door that has been closed too long.
And there’s the problem. How do you ensure that the event does not become political?
Maazel seems to have good appreciation of the situation with the former Soviet Union, an appreciation gained firsthand.
When I was conducting Russian orchestras in Moscow and Leningrad at this time, scores of ordinary citizens whispered surreptitiously, “Thank you for being with us.” The presence of foreign artists, especially American, somehow strengthened their belief that they had not been forgotten. We Westerners were their lifeline.
But the repression of North Koreans is magnitudes greater. The lunacy of Kim Jong-il and the past 50 years of tensions suggest that the situation is different than what we faced dealing with the former Soviet Union. It is not unreasonable therefore for people to question whether the New York Philharmonic’s performance in Pyongyang is a good idea. Serious people could have a serious debate.
But Maazel short-circuited that debate and turned it political with his comment last week that the U.S. is not in a position to criticize the North Korean’s record on human rights. He has not retracted that absurd remark. Instead, he has tried to obscure and emasculate his comments. Maazel now says:
I believe that America’s reputation as a safe haven for the persecuted must remain unassailable. . . . Woe to the people we are trying to help if we end up in a glass house.
Last week, Maazel did not say “if” we live in a glass house. He did not use the future or conditional tense. He said, if we examine our current record on human rights we will find that we are in no position to criticize others. That remark does not square with Maazel’s writing today. It does not square with his own account of how the values of the West were able to improve the lives of the Russians he describes.
So Maazel’s column today may help explain the role of the arts, but it does nothing to explain his own shameful remarks.
