North Korea was treated to a rare concert Tuesday from the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra played for ninety minutes in front of top North Korean officials and a national television audience. The concert opened with the national anthems of both countries. Conductor Lorin Maazel said he hopes the concert would lay ground for normalizing American-North Korean ties.

Lorin Maazel: “There may be a mission accomplished here. We may have been instrumental in opening a little door. And we certainly hope that if that’s true, that in the long run it will be seen as a watershed, you know, a moment in history by then others will follow, and there will be a normalization over maybe two decades. These things never happen at once. It may be three years before there’s some kind of a positive result. You never know. But the groundwork has been laid. There is no question about it.”