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When: 3 p.m. today
Where: Lutheran Church of the Master West Campus, 1200 N. 181st Court
Admission: Free
Thomas Jöstlein’s visit to North Korea was like a trip down the geopolitical rabbit hole.
A French horn player, Jöstlein went to the Asian country last year with the New York Philharmonic. The communist government did its best to make the musicians feel welcome, housing them in a luxury hotel.
But guards with machine guns met musicians who wanted to go sightseeing. Things got curiouser and curiouser after that.
Jöstlein, a former Omaha Symphony musician, is in town today to play with Orchestra Omaha. We asked him about his North Korea trip, his stint in the New York Philharmonic and his new gig as music professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Q. What was your first thought when you found out the New York Philharmonic was heading to North Korea?
A. We first heard about it when U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill came to talk with us about it. Quite frankly, a lot of the musicians in the orchestra were appalled at first. It seemed like they wanted the New York Philharmonic to reward this rogue regime. North Korea had a terrible record on human rights and nuclear proliferation. But Hill convinced us that it was a way to open dialogue. The Philadelphia Orchestra made a historic trip to China in 1973, and this was our chance to do the same thing in North Korea.
Q. What was your impression of North Korea?
A. We mostly saw only what the government wanted us to see. Government minders followed us everywhere. Our hotel was located on an island outside the capital city of Pyongyang. If you tried to go for a stroll or a jog, guards with machine guns would turn you back. But one of our musicians, violist Peter Kenote, somehow managed to convince the guards to let him jog off the island. Guards with machine guns followed him in a car as he ran. Even though there was no traffic on the street, and no people, they made him go through underpasses just to make sure he wouldn’t meet any real people.
Q. Did you meet any real people?
A. The closest we came was a performance we attended. It featured North Korean athletes performing amazing feats of gymnastics, and singers performing songs about Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Mostly they kept us in our hotel. We attended elaborate banquets, and since it was winter the hotel even offered to shovel the snow from the golf course in case anyone wanted to play. They cranked up the heat until it was unbearable. I think they did it to prove they could afford to heat the hotel. It was very surreal considering that North Korea is so poor you have people scraping the bottom of trash cans to find food.
Q. What was the most surprising thing you saw?
A. Probably the propaganda billboards. There was one near the concert hall that showed a communist boot smashing an American soldier. That was really disturbing. But during the concert, we played the North Korean anthem and then the American national anthem, and the Koreans gave us a huge ovation. It was very moving. Ultimately, I don’t know whether the visit did any good. As a boy, I once visited relatives in communist East Germany, so I thought I’d be prepared to visit another communist nation. I was wrong. East Germany seemed like a paradise compared to North Korea.
Q. What was it like performing with the New York Philharmonic?
A. New York Phil musicians are expected to play vast amounts of repertory over short periods of time. In one three-week period, we played a concert version of “Tosca,” the Mahler Ninth, the Bruckner Eighth, the “Ring Cycle Without Words,” Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
Q. What did you think of former New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel and his successor Alan Gilbert?
A. I had never played with a conductor the caliber of Maazel before. He had a prodigious mind and was able to learn incredible amounts of music seemingly without effort. He was technically fabulous. But there was little warmth or emotion in his interpretations. Gilbert is very young, just 42, and I would say he has some growing and grooming to do. But he does bring a much greater feel for contemporary music to the orchestra.
Q. What was your most pleasant memory of playing with the Omaha Symphony?
A. The musicians in the Omaha Symphony were the happiest group of people I’ve ever played with. That’s very different from the New York Philharmonic, which tends to put you in a very narrow artistic box. My favorite concert with the Omaha Symphony was probably the one with soprano Renée Fleming. The Holland Performing Arts Center is a wonderful place to hear the human voice.
Q. Tell us about your Orchestra Omaha concert today.
A. I’m going to play Reinhold Glière’s Horn Concerto. It’s an exciting piece because horn concertos are, in general, pretty rare, and really good ones are rarer still. This one was modeled after the Tchaikovsky concerto and is a real showpiece.
Q. You’re now teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Any advice for up-and-coming orchestra musicians?
A. Playing in an orchestra is not a job for the uncommitted. It takes constant work, and there are no guarantees. It took me 54 auditions to finally make it to an orchestra like the New York Philharmonic. If your ambition is to play in an orchestra, make sure you want to do it for the right reasons.
Contact the writer:
444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com
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