Sunday in Pittsburgh. A concert of chamber music or another Steelers game in which the home team gets pounded? The choice for me wasn't easy.

The case for the music, to be played by the Enso Quartet in the pleasant surroundings of the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, with a program including Mozart, Beethoven and a 1994 composition by Joan Tower, turned largely on three impulses.

One was the grudging admission that I actually like chamber music. The second was that listening to it lowers my blood pressure. A quick nap would be possible under either option. The third was the yearning need, amidst the banality of one's daily activities, to feel more civilized.

The case for the Steelers turned on the ever-young optimism of the team's fans that it couldn't lose six straight. The Bus will run; Maddox won't remind us just how mediocre he was before last year. Besides, Pittsburgh is football; it isn't string quartets.

Wrong. The audience at the concert was SRO, an eclectic group 450 strong. The quartet, bright young people brought here by the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, played difficult music extremely well.

The crowd at the football game, estimated at 59,000, started out grumpy, but a snappy game and the final score (28-15, Steelers) eventually made it very much worth seeing. Antwaan Randle El's running is high art in itself.

At the concert intermission, a handful of people still nursing doubts about their choice for the afternoon whipped out to their cars to get the score. By then, the home team was ahead, 21-3.

When I ran back in and eagerly reported this heavy portent, I was met with an, "Oh, Dan," which contained the unstated but clearly implied, "How could you be so Pittsburgh?" I thought of invoking the trolls who live in the mine shafts under the city to swallow her up, but I only smiled.

The point would be that we -- Pittsburghers -- are capable of juggling two appetites, chamber strings and gridiron grit, on a Sunday afternoon. Both activities reflect refined tastes. The two together suggest a split personality.

But, given the same choice, world-class music or hometown football, what would Mozart do?