Thursday (3/8) on Bloomberg.com, David Whitehouse reports, “North Korea’s Unhasu orchestra will leave its crowd-pleasing ‘Cantata to Comrade Kim Jong Il’ at home in favor of Brahms’s first symphony when it plays in Paris on March 14. For the three-year-old orchestra, the Paris event is its first performance abroad. The joint concert with the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra at the Salle Pleyel in Paris will be conducted by South Korea’s Myung-Whun Chung. Together with events this month in Washington and New York, it may signal the willingness of Kim Jong Un, the new leader of the so-called ‘Hermit Kingdom,’ to reduce its isolation. … Kim Jong Un succeeded his father Kim Jong Il after the latter’s death in December. … Unhasu was set up in 2009, according to the South Korea’s Unification Ministry in Seoul. The average age of the artists in the orchestra is about 20, according to Radio France. They use traditional Korean instruments such as the haegum, a kind of violin, and the kayagum, a kind of zither with 12 silk strings. The first part of the concert will consist of traditional Korean music, to be followed by Brahms.”
Posted March 9, 2012
