Conductor Lorin Maazel addresses a press conference held by the New York Philharmonic at the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing on Saturday.

Lorin Maazel received thunderous applause over the weekend from music fans in Beijing, as the New York Philharmonic under the baton of the 77-year-old conductor played a mixed program featuring the works of Rossini, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and Brahms.

And at the climax of the two concerts, Maazel rewarded his adoring fans with several encores, including Bizet's L'arlesienne.

"It is the fourth time Maazel has visited Beijing and every time he brings with him something new, fresh and exciting," said Chen Zuohuang, music director of the newly-opened National Center for the Performing Arts. Maazel hailed the concert hall "impressive design and architecture" and "very friendly acoustics".

However, the current Asia tour of the New York Philharmonic has yet to reach its high point - that will be when Maazel, the orchestra and the instruments as well as journalists board an Asiana Airline flight for Pyongyang today.

Maazel was extremely tight-lipped about the visit to Pyongyang when, dressed in a black Chinese-style suit with a straight high collar, he met the press in Beijing.

Despite his reticence, Maazel will draw global attention when he leads the New York Philharmonic on a ground-breaking trip, which is likened to the ping-pong diplomacy between China and the United States in the early 1970s.

During the first significant cultural visit by Americans to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the New York Philharmonic will showcase the vitality of American music and the orchestra's unique history by playing Dvorak's New World Symphony, commissioned and given its world premiere by the New York Philharmonic, and George Gershwin's American in Paris.

In a commentary published in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Maazel wrote: "I have always believed that the arts 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 US-Korean relations, such events have the potential to nudge open a door that has been closed too long."

In more than half a century of making music, the maestro has found himself in highly charged political situations, such as driving to East Berlin and back during his tenure as music director of the Deutsche Opera (1965-71), to check out a Felsenstein production at the Unter den Linden Opera.

In October 1964, he was staying at Moscow's Leningradskaya Hotel the day Khrushchev was removed. The streets were empty, but he was eventually driven through three concentric rings of tanks to get to a rehearsal, where the Russian State Orchestra was on stage ready to play Mahler 2.

Beijing is the fifth leg of the orchestra's current tour after Taipei, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

The orchestra made a memorable debut in Shanghai and thinks one of the highlights was a teaching program for 256 teenagers.

"As a father of seven kids, I am very interested in teaching young people," Maazel said during the press conference on Saturday. "Although not all these kids we teach will became professional musicians, they will all become fans of classical music and we need such defenders of classical music.

"They sat there so well prepared, so earnest and played with utter concentration. I took photos with them and shall always carry with me the image of these delightful youngsters," he said.

The orchestra is expected to stay in Pyongyang for two nights before it heads for Seoul.

(China Daily February 25, 2008)