Janelle Gelfand in Cincinnati has written one of the best inside accounts we’ve seen of the medieval torture that has been reinvented as the audition for new orchestral players.

“From a statistical chance, it’s probably easier to get into the NBA,” said Christian Colberg, principal viola of the Cincinnati Symphony. “It’s a very tough process, a process that sends people to therapists, and that truly changes your life. It’s almost barbaric, but it is absolutely fair.”

Read the full feature here.

Ray Dolby, inventor of the Dolby noise-reduction system for audio tapes and movies, was so grateful to Pembroke College, where he got his doctorate and met his wife, that he left it a fortune in his will.

The university calls it ‘the largest gift to a Cambridge college in modern times,’ an English euphemism meaning since forever. Cambridge University was founded in 1209, which falls within the category of Early Modern History.

Ray Dolby, who died in 2013, earned his PhD at Cambridge in 1961 and stayed on as a graduate student and research fellow at Pembroke. He met his wife, Dagmar Dolby, at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory of Physics.

Dagmar said: ‘At Cambridge, he gained the formative education and insights that contributed greatly to his lifelong ground-breaking creativity, and we also began a wonderful lifetime together there.’

There’s a lot of movement in Philly, most of it for the good.

We reported exclusively this week a shakeout in the woodwinds.

Now, there’s action on the board front. Press release below.

Board of Trustees Elects Mark E. Rubenstein Next Chair of the Curtis Institute of Music

A member of the Board of Trustees since 2009, Mr. Rubenstein brings a deep knowledge of the school and extensive national connections, succeeding Nina Baroness von Maltzahn on June 1, 2016

Chiona Schwarz and William R. Stensrud join the Board of Trustees, reflecting Curtis’s continued commitment to broadening the reach and expertise of its volunteer leadership

PHILADELPHIA, PA— December 4, 2015 —The Curtis Institute of Music Board of Trustees announces the election of Mark E. Rubenstein as its new chairman, effective June 1, 2016. He succeeds Nina Baroness von Maltzahn, who will remain on the board of trustees upon completing a two-year tenure marked by an expansion of worldwide touring and international exposure for the school.

This is the Royal Mail’s new Christmas stamp.

Mary appears to be playing a portable keyboard. Joseph is warming up for karaoke.

The reviews for the Chinese pianist’s performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra this week have been uniformly… epic.

John Allison in the Telegraph:

So can he play Mozart? Not really, but he does manage some exquisite Mozartian effects. Lang Lang’s problem seems to be a flighty attention span, which leaves him bored the moment anything is going well. Too immature to channel his huge talent, he took the biggest liberties in his staccato exaggerations that found him pecking at the notes aggressively — the antithesis of what the Philharmonia was doing under Esa-Pekka Salonen. The slow movement supplied some balm, but he romped noisily though the finale. Nothing added up.

And can he play Chopin? Not on the evidence of his encore, the Waltz in E flat, Op. 18. Touting a cheap imitation, Lang Lang played with a vulgarity seldom, if ever, heard on the London concert platform. For crimes against its national composer, Poland really ought to lock him up and toss the key into the Vistula.

Geoff Brown in The Times:

In Mozart’s Concerto No 24, out came his old trick of raising an idle hand high in the air, throbbing with excess feeling, while other hand works the keys. This clearly impressed some in the packed house, but it did nothing for the sense of continuity in the wonderful music he was playing.

What I heard mirrored what I saw: a string of effects, chiselled notes here, abrupt dynamic shifts there, each phrase leading a separate life from its colleagues ahead and behind.

Richard Fairman in the Financial Times:

Lang Lang is not a performer who can be upstaged easily and his wildly exaggerated playing in Grieg’s Piano Concerto was nothing if not meant to be noticed. The melodies were milked for every last drop of emotion. The faster music was hammered out at top speed regardless of sense or clarity (and not with the precision there should have been). Everything was reduced to showing off in a way that cheapened the music.

Michael Church in the Independent:

There never was any problem with his technique, and there isn’t now, but the implicit message of his playing in the first movement was ‘look at me’. The lovely Rondo which followed was efficient, but neither soloist nor orchestra seemed alive to its beauty; the concluding variations were brilliantly executed, but cold.

Then it was encore time: Chopin’s Grande valse brillante, distorted with relish, and turned into a vehicle for Lang Lang’s superabundant vanity. While Salonen looked impotently on, he accepted his plaudits with practised finesse, and a look in his eyes which seemed to say ‘No, really, you are too, too kind!’

Tim Ashley in the Guardian:

You can’t fault his often formidable dexterity, but this [Grieg] was a wayward interpretation that proceeded by fits and starts. The best of it was perversely exciting, but lurching tempo changes threatened to pull the first movement out of shape, and dynamics were extreme to the point of exaggeration in the adagio. There were plenty of characteristic grand gestures and ecstatic glances towards the audience in moments of rapt contemplation. Playing a passage for the right hand alone, at one point, he placed his left hand over his heart and gazed heavenwards. Salonen just about kept things under control.

Andrew Clements in the Guardian (CD review):

The four Chopin Scherzos are often monstrously aggressive, with their hammered chords and machine-gun figuration – what should be filigree seems more like shrapnel – and little space is given to the moments of repose that allow these wonderful pieces to breathe.

The Austrian soprano Martina Serafin severely injured her leg in the climactic jump of Wednesday night’s Tosca at the Vienna State Opera.

It appears she fell awkwardly onto the mattress and twisted the leg. She was so badly hurt that she could not take curtain calls. We hear that Martina has been put in a plaster cast for eight weeks and has cancelled her performances over that period.

Maria José Siri will take over as Tosca in Vienna.

We wish Martina a speedy recovery.

Serafin with Roberto Alagna in the Vienna production (c) Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Poehn

The tabloids are full of Myleene Klass this morning, which is just how she likes it. The paparazzi pictures, which we wouldn’t dream of showing on a grown-up site like Slipped Disc, display Classic FM weekend presenter Myleene arriving at a Cosmopolitan event with nothing but a lacy see-through covering her bottom.

In case anyone missed the spectacle, Myleene helpfully tweeted: ‘Essentially, I’ve gone out tonight in my pyjamas’.

Classic FM’s audience, many of them mature people who are presumed by advertisers to be interested in dentures and stairlifts, will be mystified perhaps by the fuss.

Myleene, who has a wry sense of self mockery and marketing, will not be in the least discomfited. Here’s her wholesome picture from Classic FM.

From Birmingham City University:

A lack of consistency in A-level music assessment could mean some students are missing out on top grades, warn researchers at Birmingham City University.

The team from the University’s School of Education discovered that music teachers have little confidence in the external examination of composition units at both AS and A-level, with many claiming that grading is inconsistent and unreliable.

The composition element of A-level music typically makes up 30 per cent of the overall grade, meaning inaccurate marking could have a significant impact on a student’s final grade.

The nationwide survey gained responses from teachers with experience of A-level music exams across both state and independent schools and looked at their experiences in the external assessment of composing in UK A-Level music examinations.

From those interviewed, 74 per cent said that they did not feel results from examination boards were consistent, whilst 66 per cent said they felt assessment requirements were unclear, leaving some feeling unconfident in predicting students grades.

One participant commented on their own experience: “The mark was significantly lower than I had expected. The student, I felt, had real flair and talent in composition and this was not recognised. I had the work remarked and the mark went up significantly.”

Another respondent added that the assessment criteria needed to be improved: “The assessment and marking criteria are too vague to be a constructive tool for both the teacher and the student. The criteria are far too ambiguous and need to be considerably more detailed with more quantitative guidelines and targets.”

Rafael Payare, conductor of the Ulster Orchestra and a rising podium star, was refused entry to the US today even though his visa is current, according to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Payare was due to give concerts with the orchestra this weekend together with his wife, the US cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

He is said to be ‘shocked‘ by his exclusion.

Cincy have replaced him with Dallas assistant conductor Karina Cannelakis.

The results are in:

I prize €25 000                   Christel Lee, USA

II prize €18 000                  Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, Austria

III prize €12 000                Friederike Starkloff, Germany

Three other finalists, Mayumi Kanagawa (USA), Minami Yoshida (Japan) and Nancy Zhou (USA) received a prize of €2000 each.

The finalists placed second and third started the last round as joint favourites.

Christel Lee, 25, studied with Kyung Wha Chung at Julliard, graduating four years ago. Of South Korean origin, she was born in the US and raised in Canada.

picture: Dorothee Falke

Other prizes:
The Foundation of Helsinki Conservatory of Music awarded a special prize of  €3000 to Emmanuel Tjeknavorian for the best interpretation of Sibelius Violin Concerto
City of Järvenpää awarded a special prize of €2000 to Friederike Starkloff for the best interpretation of commissioned piece in second round.  The commissioned piece was one of the award-winning pieces from Jean Sibelius Composition Competition 2015.
The best Finnish contestant Pekko Pulakka got the special prize from the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yleisradio; invitation to make a recording for Yle.

When Morris Robinson lets rips, the stage shakes.

Morris has just let rip in the direction of Knoxville Opera which only seeks to cast ‘age appropriate, attractive artists’, no-one older or less pretty.

Says Morris:

With regards to Knoxville Opera, and the Executive Director who blew me off and didn’t return my call …

I’ve called (executive director and conductor Brian) Salesky’s office … he hasn’t returned my call. I figured he wouldn’t. This business is full of folks who sit behind shields and throw darts … yet are too afraid to stand behind their own words.

The pop star has sent the orch $50,000 in gratitude for its recording of John Luther Adams’ haunting piece, Become Ocean.

In her letter to music director Ludovic Morlot (which has not been published), Swift is said to have praised the beauty of the work and the musicianship of the orchestra. She also recalled going to hear her local symphony with her grandmother and how important that was to her.

Two years ago, we reported that she gave $100,000 to her home town Nashville Symphony.

Because she likes the things we do.

Morlot has gone on Youtube to say thanks.

Taylor’s style.

The Adams session.