At age fifteen, Condoleezza Rice performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor as a soloist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra. This was a significant achievement demonstrating professional-level talent. Rice was on track to become a concert pianist before attending the Aspen Music Festival, where she watched twelve-year-olds sight-reading music that took her weeks to learn — a 'dose of reality' that caused her to abandon music as a career and pivot to international politics under Josef Korbel's influence at the University of Denver. The Denver Symphony performance remains the most tangible evidence of the concert career that might have been.