On Friday evening, under the baton of Thomas Wilkins and the Omaha Symphony, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice performed the first movement (and just the first-movement-only) of the much loved Piano Concerto in A Minor.
No, not Edvard Grieg's Opus 16, but the slightly easier ivory of Robert Schumann's Op. 54 (again, "Allegro affettuoso," only).
Neither audio nor video has yet to surface online, so instead, Classicalite figured it would point you the way of the Omaha World-Herald's correspondent Todd von Kampen.
"She did well," reads von Kampen's sort of non-committal review of Condi Rice at the Holland Center.
Having studied piano both at Aspen and the University of Denver, surely, Rice's technique wasn't nearly this crooked.
Of course, not every political pianist can be as practiced as Harry S. Truman's Debussy.
Much less Robert C. Byrd's wild, wonderful and historically informed violin.
Which is to say nothing of the present administration's love for the classics.
Then again, not every muso-political argument need be partisan. Just ask the songwriting senator from the great state of Utah, Mr. Orrin Grant Hatch.
Unless you're Lee Atwater, that is.
