The New York Philharmonic visited Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing in the past week, but the pundits know that the orchestra's most important stop is Pyongyang, North Korea.

The American musicians arrive in North Korean capital today and are expected to entertain Koreans tomorrow. Their performance will be broadcast live across North Korea.

The relationship between the US and North Korea remains fractious, so the orchestra's trip has created quite a stir throughout the world.

The United States, which considers the tour a form of cultural diplomacy, expects the trip to create new inroads in areas where traditional diplomacy has failed, and eventually lead to a restoration of full diplomatic relations between the two nations.

The orchestra's choice of material for its Pyongyang show is interesting. Along with Dvorak's Symphony No 9 (From the New World) and George Gershwin's An American in Paris, the musicians will play the national anthems of North Korea and the US, which until recently would have been considered inconceivable.

The New York Philharmonic's trip to Pyongyang is the first major cultural visit by Americans to North Korea. But it is not the first of its kind. In 1956, the Boston Symphony made history as the first major American orchestra to travel to the Soviet Union. In 1959, the New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein, traveled to the Soviet Union. In 1973, following US President Richard Nixon's visit, the Philadelphia Orchestra came to China.

These trips were an important part of US diplomacy.

Both Lorin Maazel, the New York Philharmonic's music director, and Zubin Mehta, who leads the first-class orchestra, have played down the political implications of the trip. However, there should be little doubt that their visit is of both cultural and diplomatic significance.

The caution the US orchestra has demonstrated in dealing with the arrangements for its North Korea trip adds to the expectations Washington and Pyongyang have placed on it.

The trip is being characterized as "orchestra diplomacy", a close cousin to the "ping-pong diplomacy" between China and the US in the 1970s.

History is full of such repetitions. The subtleties of the New York Philharmonic's North Korean trip deserve careful observation.

(China Daily February 25, 2008)