WHAT’S your choice? High art or low comedy? In Bombay you can have both, provided of course that you don’t want them on the same day.

The former, predictably, was courtesy the National Centre for Performing Arts when it presented Stephen Kovacevich. Over a 50 plus year career, the renowned pianist has many distinctions to his name, including his name. He was first called Stephen Bishop, then Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich and finally Stephen Kovacevich. (He was born Kovacevich to a Croatian father and an American mother who later married an American called Bishop).

But if he had any confusion about his identity, it didn’t show up in his music, which has been one upward graph from his debut at 14 to his present exalted status at 69.

At his recital at the Tata theatre, Kovacevich played Beethoven and Schubert, but not the obvious Beethoven and Schubert. This has

been a characteristic of his, starting from his very first solo recital at the age of 20 when he chose to play Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata. He seemed to say, why make allowances for the audience? Play pieces which are not easy listening. Perhaps even difficult. So no Moonlight Sonata, no Appassionata, no Waldstein. Instead we heard Beethoven’s 5th Sonata where Beethoven composes with the showiness of youth and the 31st, a late work, obviously more mature, philosophical even. The Schubert Sonata played by Kovacevich was the D960, his last Sonata.

Kovacevich is not too fond of critics, but critics are fond of him.

One said of his Beethoven, “His playing not only bristles with a formidable physicality, but shows little time for small talk.” Or of his 1982 recording of the Schubert Sonata, another critic said, “This is an uncommonly dark, disturbing view of the work.” Later at a small dinner hosted by

NCPA chairman Khushroo Suntook, Kovacevich talked not of Diabelli Variations but audience variations.

The best audience? Paris definitely.

Followed by New York. The worst? Small Dutch towns where they know nothing, and Vienna, where they think they know everything. And Bombay? "I don't know...But people did cough a lot." That wasn't a reflection on his playing I told him; it had to do with the monsoon. And did he realise that the standing ova tions he received at the interval and at the end of the programme wasn't a standard Bombay practice? No he didn't, he said, looking pleased.

For low comedy you go to the Comedy Store, a new enterprise which opened at the Palladium Mall just a couple of months ago. If you go to the Comedy Store hoping to buy some comedy, you will be disap pointed: This is a collective of British stand-up comics who perform most evenings in an auditorium style set ting. This has worked successfully in London for years. A second outlet was opened in Manchester and the third? In Bombay. They must have heard somewhere that we have a sense of humour. Perhaps we do.

Perhaps we have to, to survive in this w crazy city.

The different acts every week have one thing in common: the e comedy is below the belt. That is so in two ways. The first is that all the jokes are about genitals and orifices and what we do with them. The second is that late-comers and people who foolishly occupy the front row are mercilessly ribbed.

Like the middle-aged couple who not only come late, but compound their folly by sitting in the front row.

The lady is holding a full plate.

(Food and drinks are allowed in the auditorium). `What's that on your plate?' `Cake' `Why cake?' `It's our anniversary.' `How many years have you been married?' The lady says 22.

`Twenty two years married to him, and all you get is a piece of cake!' That's just the start. The marriage jokes go on through the evening.

In short, we are dealing here with schoolboy humour, that is, scatological jokes and poking fun at others. All shows are packed, especially weekends. The audience laughs uproariously. Amazing how many schoolboys and schoolgirls there are in this world, some of them in their 50s.

And me? I had tears in my eyes.

From laughing.