It appears that Sergey Dogadin, winner of the richly endowed Joseph Joachim competition, is a student of Boris Kushner, one of the judges. The relationship was not declared on the competition website.

It is made clear in Dogadin’s biography here: In March 2013, Sergei was adopted in solo graduate of the University of Arts in Graz (Austria), Professor – Boris Kushnir.

So did Kushnir vote for his own student to win? And did the other judges know?

Photographer unknown.

Taken at Luton Airport, awaiting arrivals from Tel Aviv.

Add your own caption.

Washington National Opera has been scouring the world for a conductor after Dennis Russell Davies underwent knee surgery and pulled out of next month’s production of Philip Glass’s opera, Appomattox.

The score is now in the hands of the Italian conductor and composer, Dante Santiago Anzolini, who recently led a production of Akhnaten in Turin.

This was something of an anomaly for Dante, who has a healthy interest in Schoenberg and atonality.

But his first reading of the opera suggests (he tells us) that Glass has moved away from repetitive minimalism into a more complex tonal idiom.

photo: Susan Wilson 

Washington could be in for an interesting experience.

Congratulations to two Philadelphia players – first violinist Rachael Matthey and Philly Pops concertmaster Michael Ludwig – who put the intermission of their Saturday afternoon concert at Kimmel Center to good use by getting the mayor to marry them in front of an audience of 2,000. More here.

Watch.

Slipped Disc’s scout at the Chopin Competition reports that after a five-day absence to attend a friend’s wedding in Shanghai, Yundi Li clocked in this morning to resume his jury service in Warsaw.

He’ll need a good night’s sleep to overcome jetlag and the wedding hangover.

A fun duet, newly uploaded, by Jonas Kaufmann and Placido Domingo.

h/t: Basia Jaworski

Now the ratpack is upon him for smearing the dying and the dead, let these things be remembered:

1 Tom Watson MP was the only person in authority who listened to victims of child abuse at a time when no newspaper could be bothered to give them time of day.

2 Tom Watson MP cared for the victims and made the connection between them and an initially sceptical police force.

3 His involvement resulted in increased police activity which led, in turn, to numerous successful prosecutions.

4 Tom Watson was also a leader of the inquiry into phone-hacking and other abuses by the press, which is why they are hounding him now.

5 Tom Watson MP went way over the top in smearing the late Leon Brittan and others as paedophiles on the basis of unchecked testimony. He needs to apologise for the suffering he caused to the innocent and their families.

6 But – the big but – Tom Watson MP has made it harder for paedophiles to prey on British schoolchildren and his actions have forced many academies, including music colleges, to improve child protection.

For this, he deserves a public vote of thanks.

Declaration of interest: I have met Tom Watson only once, when being cross-examined by him before the House of Commons culture committee. He, together with Louise Mensch on the Tory side, were keenly interested in tackling maladministration and injustice wherever it occurred, something that cannot be said for many politicians.

Ray Robinson, who headed the Peabody conservatory from 1963 to 1969 and later served as music director of the Palm Beach Symphony, has died at 82.

He was a prolific author of composer guides.

In a blog that the Guardian has not seen fit to print, veteran music critic Andrew Clements nails Gergiev’s eight years at the London Symphony Orchestra – a partnership that ends this week with not much more than a whimper.

Gergiev’s interests range far and wide, from Fifa ((pictured) to turkey farms. He never seemed fully engaged.

As Clements points out, few outstanding performances spring readily to mind:

The fact remains that the LSO has had Gergiev as its figurehead for eight years, and in that period it has very rarely experienced the inspirational best of him on the podium, or received the close attention, what you might call the pastoral care, that a really diligent chief conductor can bring to an orchestra’s culture of concert-giving. At times during that period, the sound of the orchestra, in its home at the Barbican especially, was coarse and unpleasant.

Read the full blog here.

Josef Spacek, concert master of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, had his precious 1855 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume instrument confiscated by Russian customs officers at Koltsovo airport near Yekaterinburg, as he tried to leave the country on Thursday after giving a festival performance.

The Customs men accused Josef of trying to smuggle out the instrument without paying duties.

As of this moment, we do not know if the violin has been returned to its owner. Tass, which reports the story, has put an inflated value on the instrument. The festival has refused to comment. We are waiting to hear more from Josef and the Czech Phil.

Remember: You take precious objects to Russia at your own risk.

We had a cryptic message from a Warsaw contact saying Yundi Li, the 2000 winner, had vanished from the juror. ‘Yundi is presently getting married.’ Which, for all sorts of reasons, seemed unlikely.

But Yundi’s social media have gone unusually quiet – he hasn’t tweeted in half a week – and Rudolph Tang has come up with pics of the pianist dancing at a pal’s wedding in Shanghai. This seems to be the source.

(Yundi’s on  the far right

These Shanghai weddings are not quick registry affairs. The eating and drinking goes on for days.

Will Yundi be back for the final round? We’re waiting to hear from him. The Poles are not best pleased.