The all-male piano finalists are:

Kenneth Broberg

Konstantin Emelyanov

 

Mao Fujita

Alexandre Kantorow

Alexey Melnikov

Dmitri Shishkin

An Tianxu

 

 

Slippedisc readers will be aware that the violin teacher Boris Kushnir has helped his pupil Sergey Dogadin to win several international competitions in which he was a judge or chairman.

Well, he has just done it again.

Dogadin is among the last six finalists at the Tchaikovsky Competition.

He has one vote cast for him before he even plays.

The other five are:

Mayumi Kanagawa

Marc Bouchkov

Aylen Pritchin

Milan al-Ashab

and Donghyun Kim.

 

 

The low-profile contest was won tonight by the Ukrainian baritone Andrei Kymach, 31.

The prize is worth £20,000 and a peck on the cheek from Dame Kiri te Kanawa.

A graduate of the Bolshoi’s young artist programme in Moscow, Kymach debuted last year at the Liceu in Barcelona in I puritani. In January and February this year, he sang Don Giovanni in Nice and Antibes.

UK mezzo Katie Bray won the audience prize.

 

 

Yo Yo’s free concert at Millennium Park Chicago this week of the 6 Bach suites.

 

Photo: CSO cellist Brant Taylor

Yo Yo Ma has been Creative Consultant to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the past decade.

His Thursday performance shocked one spectator into verse:

…. Face to face, Ma and the crowd
Hangin’ out at the bandshell
Folks filled the park ‘till they spilled in the street
For the thrill to hear Bach come alive..

Read on here.

Swedish television has made a half-hour documentary on Elisabeth Wiklander, a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Worth watching (even the bits in Swedish make sense).

Click here.

We have been alerted to what is claimed as a first recording of music by Ernst Bachrich, stident of Arnold Schoenberg and co-founder of the Society for Private Music performances.

Bachrich was murdered by the Nazis at Majdanek in 1942.

You can listen to samples of his music here.