Albright, Schenkman & Steinway At Town Hall

Town Hall - All the Thrill of Cable Access, Live! (TM). In Seattle, this is actually a draw. Maybe it's also due to their PBS-minded Upstairs Downstairs set-up.

Last night the upstairs was jammed with 800 perspiring Albrightists, ready to hear her declaim on the prospects for faith-based political strategery (we believe this is related to the President's plan to hold Condi over his head during battle, to bring the sun to a stop in the heavens and thus demoralize the Canaanites or what-not). It sounds dramatic as hell, but former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pooh-poohed the notion of going to war with Iran. She explains it all in her new book. It "offers a balanced but, when necessary, devastating analysis of U.S. strategy and condemns those of all faiths who exploit religious fervor to create divisions or enhance their own power," according to a reputable supplier of dust-jacket blurbitry.

Downstairs, Byron Schenkman was giving a solo piano recital in support of his new Joseph Haydn CD on Centaur. He spiced up a mostly-Haydn-sonatas program with Robert Starer's "Three Israeli Sketches," Beethoven's Sonata in F Major, Op. 10, No. 1, and Barktok's "Three Rondos on Folk Tunes." (The Adagio from Beethoven's Sonata in F Minor, Op. 2, No. 1, was an encore.)

He was also inaugurating Town Hall's new piano, a 1921 Steinway Hamburg, a gift of the late, beloved, conductor Hans Wolf. The piano's clear, warm treble shone in Schenkman's hands, who assembles runs of notes as clearly as pearls on a string; its lower register struck as more guttural -- which we first thought was just a Bartok sound-effect. We were one of the youngest attendees, naturally (we were a little surprised to see gadfly David Brewster downstairs instead of up). If nothing else, hearing Haydn live deepens our experience of period-drama movies where people sit in a small room and listen intently to music that has no idea that this is on the way.