Beares tell us that a silver and ebony mounted violin bow by François Xavier Tourte (c.1825) sold on Monday for a world record auction price of $288,960.

The bow is believed to have been owned by Bronislaw Huberman, founder of the Israel Philharmonic, and bears his engraved initials. It was bought at auction by a professional violinist.

Here’s Gilles Henry today with his violin. We don’t know yet how it was returned to him, or if a reward was paid.

Marianna Chelkova, deputy mayor of Colmar and former president of the Opera du Rhin, died last night of cancer at the age of 59.

Russian born, Marianna was an accomplished pianist and an impassioned advocate for cultural activity across the region. Obituary here.

Musicians in Washington DC and beyond are rallying for soprano Katherine Keem, a member of Washington National Opera who has stage 4 cancer and is fighting both for her life and to help her 12 year-old son fulfil a dream.

‘I was diagnosed with a very rare triple negative metaplastic breast cancer in November of 2014, during Washington National Opera’s production of La Boheme. I immediately had a total skin sparing mastectomy followed by 16 very harsh chemotherapy treatments, all in the hopes of zapping out the cancer. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. My first PET scan and my mammogram after chemo were supposed to be routine check-ups. But they weren’t. Soon I was experiencing a splitting headache with vomiting.  An MRI revealed that the cancer had spread to my brain. I am now facing stage 4 brain cancer.  All of a sudden, I’m fighting for my life, but I’ll fight strong for my 12 year old only child, Andrew. He’s my inspiration, my hope and my everything…

‘Before this cancer consumes my life, please help make it possible for me to live to see Andrew be a World Champion.’

Read more – and donate – here. Katherine needs to raise another $13,000.

We, Katherine’s colleagues at Washington National Opera, need you to help us get the word out. It takes so little of a donation from you. Think of what we spend for a tank of gas. We can make sure that Kate gets the care she so desperately needs. Now, she needs us.

A survey by Help Musicians UK finds that musicians are four times more likely to suffer hearing damage than others and more than twice as likely to experience tinnitus. Details here.

One of the sorriest sagas in Dutch music ended today with the resignation of Harm Mannak as chief executive of HET symfonieorkest, orchestra of the East Netherlands.

Mannak, who made himself unpopular by taking another orchestra to court in a name dispute, claimed he would put the orchestra on a firm financial footing without structural state subsidy by 2018.

But a report out tomorrow will show (we hear) that HET is spending 5 million Euros a year, against subsidy of 3.5m. So Mannak (l.) has gone and there are fears the orch may not long outlast him.

The Echo has obtained details of a city plan to build an iconic building on the Mersey.

Report here.

Katherine Browning’s lost bass clarinet has been found at Manchester Airport, thanks to exceptional efforts made by a Slipped Disc reader, David Caris. We’re delighted all has turned out well. Here’s what Katherine tells us.

As you may have seen by the comments from the original post, the bass clarinet was located by staff member Mr David Caris at lost property (Terminal 1) at Manchester; he says that it must have been classed as ‘unattended’ and logged by security and screened. It was then “taken (by security) to be screened for IED / dangerous items etc and at the end of the day yesterday (20.00) it was transferred to T1 lost property, as T3 do not have lost property.

Whilst I recognise that the (initial and eventual) location of the instrument is not Flybe’s doing, the lack of staff (both from Flybe and Manchester Airport incidentally) being available to communicate properly with me from the beginning (both at the time I left it and after it went missing) meant that I’ve gone through unnecessary stress due to lack of transparency with information and procedures.

On the day itself not at any point did the member of staff seem inclined to make doubly sure myself/my baggage was taken care of, despite my asking questions to try to make sure it was put where it should have been; I don’t fly often, so how am I supposed to know what to do instinctively? Osmosis?<

That night, once I realised the bass wasn’t where it should have been, I reported it to the first member of staff I could see; the gentleman was very helpful and did all he could to get in contact with Manchester airport, but there was no reply at first to his email. He said I should get home and get some sleep and he would leave notes for his colleague for tomorrow’s (Monday’s) shift.

I took to twitter in the morning to try and get Flybe’s attention to start looking, because by this point I had no IDEA what was going on (phonelines were jammed due to the weather); I hoped that their agent on twitter might be able to help, but no answers were forthcoming. In the end it took my mentor Sarah Watts getting involved. She contacted Mr Lebrecht, who was kind enough to post about it to try and get some sort of light shed on the issue.

An Italian percussionist, Simone Rubino, has been named winner of the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award 2016. The prize is SFr 75,000 ($75,782) and a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Rubino, 22, won the ARD music competition this summer.

Previous Credit Suisse winners include Patricia Kopatchinskaja (2002), Sol Gabetta (2004), Antoine Tamestit (2008), Vilde Frang (2012) and Sergey Khachatryan (2014).

It’s the fast-rising Mexican, Alondra de la Parra, and she has named the baby, Luciano.

Congratulations all round.

Alondra is the newly appointed music director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane, Australia.

Gilles Henry is distraught.

His Lorenzo Storioni violin was last seen in an Autolib electric car returned on October 29 at 12.30 at Courbevoie/Arche/49 station.

The orchestra is offering a reward to the finder. Contact them here.

The pianist has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing where he was harshly treated as a boy. It’s the first Hon. Dr. ever granted by the CCM, a creeping sign of bad western habits.