Gilbert Kaplan has updated his magnificent Mahler Album with six fresh photographs and several revised captions. There’s also a learned not on Mahler’s spectacles and Alfred Roller’s physical description of Mahler, in my translation.

The Austrian Theatre Museum has also expanded its Gustav Mahler in Wien to GM in Wien und München. Likewise unmissable, if you can find it. The publisher is Christian Brandstätter, but there doesn’t seem to be a web link.

And a book has appeared in Czech and English on the new monument to Mahler in Jihlava, the town where he grew up.

BBC Symphony Orchestra player Keith Gurry has had his violins and bows stolen from his home…

Violins: Francesco Guadagnini (Turin, 1888) Ian Highfield (Birmingham, 1982)

Bows: Malcolm Taylor (Gold-mounted, tortoiseshell) R. Herbert Leicht Matthew Coltman (Silver-mounted) Carbon fibre bow (col legno). If you see them for sale please contact the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

• Tel 020 7765 5751
• Fax 020 7286 3251
• Email bbcso@bbc.co.uk

It was not on impulse, nor last minute nerves, that Sir Paul McCartney attended synagogue on the eve of his wedding – on the day of Yom Kippur.

Tomorrow’s JC has the full story. It appears that he booked 15 seats at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue three months in advance to make sure that his bride-to-be, Nancy Shevell, and members of her family did not miss out on the holiest day of the year. And then he joined them himself.

The synagogue had no more than routine security, but that was enough to deter paparazzi.

The party did not stay to break the fast, nor did the happy couple receive a rabbi’s blessing, as reported elsewhere.

The Metropolitan Opera’s press department, also known as the New York Times, has filed a report saying the company has enjoyed a record year in fundraising – all the more remarkable an achievement in the depths of recession. The Times calls it ‘astonishing’, ‘whopping’ and ‘bonanza’ – excessive even in press release language.

Whatever, hats off to the development director, Coralie Toevs, who has reeled in the big fishes.

However, my mole in the finance department tells me that the running costs are far higher than previously revealed, with Peter Gelb’s movie spend running up eye-watering bills. Others in the building have been muttering similar things. I am trying to lay hands on hard budgets.

My guess is that Gelb will soon bring out a fully audited set of figures whose red lines will look a lot softer now the donations look so healthy.

This just in from CMU Daily:

JUSTIN BIEBER’S $100,000 HAIRCUT

Jay Foreman, CEO of Florida toy manufacturer The Bridge Direct, which produces Justin Bieber’s range of dolls, has revealed that when the teen pop star got his hair cut on a whim during a video shoot back in February, it cost the company $100,000. 

“First off, I had no idea what he did”, Foreman says of the moment Bieber tweeted pictures of his new do. “I heard a lot of shrieks around me, and people running in and out of their offices. I got everyone into a conference room and we looked at some images. We weren’t sure what he had done. Then it became obvious that his trademark was gone”. 

With the next batch of dolls already in production ready for this year’s Christmas demand, Foreman was forced to halt the production line and redesign the dolls, costing the company $100,000. Although revenues for Bieber dolls and accessories currently stand at over $100 million, so I wouldn’t spend too long being sympathetic.

Here are some rival classical cuts below. Feel free to send in your personal favourites.

and more… here’s Jacques Zoon, solo flautist (ex Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonic)

The younger sister of Noa, Israel’s biggest world music star after Ofra Haza, has launched her own career.

Odeya Nini, 13 years younger, saw her big sister leave home when she was three, she tells Haaretz.

Her work is on another plane altogether – in the contemplative outer reaches of contemporary classical music – long silences, that sort of thing – the Whitney Museum point where post-mod composition meets post-modernist art.

Here‘s a video clip. And here’s another, working with Christian Marclay.

And here are the two sisters together, from Noa’s website:

Various people in Paris maintain it was Barbara, who was performing from 1959, and I’m inclined to endorse that.

But when did Carole King start?

And Judy Collins?

Did Billie Holiday write any of her own?

Either way, Amy Winehouse would never have been what she was without these antecedents. The JC reports today that her father Mitch is speedwriting a biography.