And the next music director is….

Slipped Disc was the first to tip Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as the next music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. We knew what the players wanted and we called it right.

Now, with strong conviction but slightly less confidence in the outcome, we are happy to confide that, as of this moment, the favourite to succeed Jaap van Zweden at the Dallas Symphony is … Karina Canellakis.

Karina, 34, has risen like a rocket in the past year. She won major agency representation at AskonasHolt and was first in line to step in for Niklaus Harnoncourt when the early-music maestro subsided into retirement.

This weekend she covered triumphantly for Van Zweden when he was summoned to Holland for a family emergency. Local media attributed her success to Van Zweden’s tutelage; she is in her second year as his assistant conductor. But local musicians tell us she has got what it takes.

For want of compelling international contenders on the Dallas guest list – the top names are James Gaffigan and Joshua Weilerstein – Karina can be considered a front-runner.

And if she doesn’t win Dallas by the summer, she will be head-hunted somewhere else.