Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- In Alan Gilbert’s first season, just announced, New York Philharmonic will pay a reparatory visit to Vietnam, a gesture infinitely more meaningful and productive than Lorin Maazel’s attention-grabbing swoop last year on North Korea.

Why so? Because, while the U.S. has dues to pay in both places, Vietnam these days is a fairly open society where people can read what they like on the Internet and choose which concerts to attend. About 17,000 Vietnamese bought into the BBC’s download Beethoven cycle.

Those who go to hear the New York Philharmonic will do so out of free will, not as puppets of a regime where nothing moves an eyelid without the Dear Leader’s say-so.

In Pyongyang, the audience was made up of party hacks and hordes of foreign journalists who descended on a starved, enslaved society like proverbial locusts. The concert, an empty showcase for one of the cruellest governments on earth, achieved precisely nothing.

In Hanoi, most of the audience will be survivors of the Vietnam War or its human legacy, the progeny of relationships, loving or coerced, between U.S. soldiers and local people. There is much pain and memory still to be catharted in Vietnam and this event promises to be a new stage in the healing process. It augurs well for Gilbert’s leadership.

For more information on the New York Philharmonic, go to http://nyphil.org.

(Norman Lebrecht is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Norman Lebrecht in London at norman@normanlebrecht.com.

Last Updated: January 12, 2009 09:19 EST