Elsa Dreisig, 24, took first prize for women.

Anatoli Sivko, 28, from Belarus was the men’s champion.

South Africans took 3rd prizes.

Results:

Female
1st Prize Elsa Dreisig
2nd Prize Miriam Albano
3rd Prize Price Bongiwe Nakani

Hollywood’s Irish Rose has died, aged 95.

She had a fantastic repertoire of Irish songs.

‘I am a great admirer of Mrs Merkel‘s campaign,’ he has told the German press agency:

By making the clear statement “We can do this,” Merkel really stuck her neck out, he said, arguing that now she must not lose her nerve. If she manages that, “I believe she will prevail.”

Barenboim, 72, said refugees who had been accepted needed to have greater support through cultural education.

“Germany has been exemplary in how it has dealt with its past during the Nazi era,” he said. “But now the next step is necessary: Germans should also be ready to share their great German culture with the new arrivals … That would be the best defence of European values.”

The last world premiere of a major Górecki work, his hour-long oratorio Sanctus Adalbertus, will take place in Kraków on 4 November. It was composed in 1997 to mark the millennium of Poland’s patron saint and somehow got ignored until after Górecki’s death in 2010.

The composer Ailís Ní Ríain has been playing Emily’s piano at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth and has composed an installation for it.

She tells Slipped Disc: ‘She was a very good pianist and even studied piano seriously in Brussels for a while. She played daily and I’ve been through her scores and I can see that she was playing to an advanced level. The instrument itself is a beautiful old up-strung piano which took three years dedicated work to fully restore.’

And here’s the rather lovely and evocative installation:

Linger – Ailís Ní Ríain @ The Brontë Parsonage Museum from Ailís Ní Ríain on Vimeo.

The works are installed throughout the Brontë home and visitors can experience them until 4th January 2016.

The Philharmonic has posted rehearsal video of the interim conductor they kicked out in 1952 and welcomed back 40 years later. Celi lets the violins have it full volume…..

I have just reviewed the book below this weekend for the JC. The book has completely changed my attitude towards western efforts to bring music to the West Bank. I am aware that many young musicians go to Palestine with the highest of intentions.

But from Sandy Tolan’s account, it appears their ideals are cleverly converted into politics.

From the review:

A London orchestral violinist I know spends her summer leave working with cancer kids in Africa. A French bassoonist takes a 100-kilometre run in support of an educational mission. An Australian violinist volunteers for Médecin sans Frontières. Few occupations in my experience are as caring, as giving of time and effort in good causes, as classical musicians.

Over the years I have seen dozens of European and American musicians backpack off to Ramallah with the aim of training Palestinian youngsters to play in orchestras. Although many return with a restricted view of the situation, I have always assumed that their civilising presence did some good. Reading Sandy Tolan’s one-eyed, unquestioning, hopelessly sentimental narrative of ‘the power of music in a hard land’, I am forced to reconsider every aspect of that assumption.

Read the full review here.

This is Ben Reed putting in the hours on a piano he found abandoned in the dunes at Radical Bay, Magnetic Island, Queensland. Never waste an opportunity.

It’s being claimed that Ludovico Einaudi is the first classical composer to break the pop charts for 20 years.

That would be since since Henry Mikolai Gorecki, we reckon.

But Gorecki sold a million copies of his 3rd symphony.

Einaudi has some way to go.

Universal press release:

Ludovico Einaudi this week becomes the first classical composer in over 20 years to reach the Top 15 in the Official UK Album Charts.

His new album ‘Elements’ debuted at No.12 (Einaudi’s highest ever chart position) – overtaking pop stars James Bay and Taylor Swift and beating the likes of Scouting for Girls and Fightstar.

It is the highest-charting modern classical album since the Polish composer Henryk Gorecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ reached No.6 in 1992.

Einaudi, who studied with Luciano Berio and is the grandson of former President of Italy, Luigi Einaudi, also becomes the first classical pianist to reach the UK Top 15.  He is No.1 in the UK Classical Charts too.

Ludovico Einaudi says:

“As a composer, it is a great thrill for me to have an album in the Top 15 of the pop charts.  I’m delighted that listeners have embraced the sound of ‘Elements’ and hope they continue to enjoy my music.”

The sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana are a fine young violin-piano duo on the European circuit.

Tonight, thieves broke in to Natascia’s house at Sora, near Rome, and stole her violin.

It’s an ORESTE MARTINI made in Mantova, 1919.

Please report any sightings to Dg@Duogazzana.Com.

Natascia and her violin with a sometime mentor.

You read that right.

In the authoritative Times Higher Educational Supplement rankings, Stanford, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the top three spots, beating Oxford, London and Cambridge into 4th, 5th and 6th.

MIT is where this sort of thing counts for piano practise. No idea what they pitch at Stanford.

Yale fails to make the top ten and Leiden is the highest placed European continent university at 17, just ahead of the Free University of Berlin.

Heidelberg, six places behind, have called them out for a duel.

Full top 100 here.

They’ve just given it to Willie Nelson.

Previous winners (since 2007) are Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. ‘The selection … is made by the Librarian of Congress in consultation with board members selected for their expertise in various fields related to music.’

Oh yeah?

Then why has there been no winner from Gershwin’s specialist fields of opera, piano and orchestral music?