Pianos

At the opening-night performance of "2 Pianos 4 Hands" attended by your reviewer, the audience leaped to its feet at the curtain call, cheering and showering the actors with bravos. Yet in his review ["A Two-Hander for 20 Fingers," June 24], David Ng dismissed the show as a "crowd-pleaser," as if it were a bad thing. It's that kind of contempt for audiences that's killing the American theater. Jude Wadler Hollywood :: It's not "Master Class" or "The Piano Teacher," nor does it try to be. It's merely a wonderful, fulfilling, joyous night at the theater, and the brilliant work of two actors/pianists, Jeffrey Rockwell and Roy Abramsohn, make it more so. Sandy Schuckett Los Angeles

As the genial host of National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," Noah Adams must have more friends than he can imagine. But he's making a lot of new ones as a result of his new book, "Piano Lessons: Music, Love & True Adventures." "It's amazing what's happening," Adams said recently from his home in a Washington, D.C., suburb. "People come up to me after I talk [on the book tour] and tell me a story. "Each encounter takes about seven or eight minutes.

In a nondescript warehouse amid the alfalfa fields and vineyards of the San Joaquin Valley, Ken Caulkins and a half-dozen employees create an amazing array of automated musical instruments. A calliope for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August is under construction there today.

Some pianists play their recitals by the number. Leonid Hambro plays his by lottery. Those attending Hambro's recital Saturday in Mission Viejo will receive a numbered ticket and a list of 120 works by composers from Bach to Villa-Lobos, all of which are presumably at his fingertips. Tickets are picked one at a time, and winning ticket holders make a request. The program unfolds one piece at a time, so Hambro, 76, never knows what's coming next.

It's an ordinary student apartment in West L.A.: roommates, a few sticks of furniture, a sofa cobbled together of mismatched cushions in shades of orange and green (the originals were ruined by cats), a 13-inch color TV balanced on a USC-themed footstool held up by a goofy pair of stuffed human "legs" with a pair of Nikes on the feet. And a Steinway grand piano.

Pianist Vivian Dow had looked for months for a good used instrument. "I wanted a Steinway grand," she says. "But I couldn't spend more than $10,000." And then came her lucky Sunday. Looking through classified ads, she found her piano--a six-foot, 1924 Steinway, for sale for $6,500 by a private party. Dow made an appointment to see it the same day. "What sold me on it," she says, "was the sound. It had a very beautiful, warm sound."

What comes from Italy, weighs 1,550 pounds and measures 10 feet, 2 inches front to back? Give up? It's the world's said-to-be largest piano, the Fazioli Model F-308. For six months, a Model F-308 has been making appearances across the United States. Here in Los Angeles, it's been on display all this month, for anyone to try out, at a local piano showroom. And it has been played by professionals at the Hollywood Bowl (at a jazz concert, Sept. 13) and at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City (last week).

Pianist Phyllis Chen worried when she asked Andre Watts, her mentor at Indiana University in Bloomington, if she could use toy pianos for one of her doctoral recitals. After all, without his permission, the department wouldn't even consider it. Watts, more used to the standard classical repertoire, found the request surprising. But he listened closely to her proposal.

NO one paying attention to recent musical trends in Asia can have failed to notice it: The Chinese are crazy about piano playing. Among city dwellers, there's been nothing like this enthusiasm since the '80s, when an embrace of the Japanese-originated Suzuki teaching method created a national army of child violinists.

The grand piano of late cabaret singer Bobby Short sold for $132,000 in an auction of his personal effects, auction house Christie's said. The piano, a 1971 black lacquer Bechstein kept in Short's Manhattan apartment, had a pre-sale estimate of $30,000 to $40,000. A monogrammed Cartier silver ice bucket sold for $18,000 and an Art Deco wrought iron fire screen brought $12,000, the auction house said.