The Double Concerto is to be found on Naxos 8.555763, and with another very good recording and performance with Antoni Wit (see review). Nicholas Daniel is in a league of his own, but oboist Arkadiusz Krupa and harpist Nicolas Talliez give away little to the soloists here. It is the presence and impact of the Wroclaw strings which makes the opening to this piece more impressive than the Naxos recording, and with everything else very much in place the choice is a relatively easy one – unless budget should be your over-riding concern. Daniel’s poetry is not only evident in the slow and lyrical central Dolente, but is also an element in the vocal hysteria of the openingRapsodico, and the variety of his articulation and technical prowess is stunning throughout. Lucy Wakeford’s harp is equally effective in musical terms, though with a realistic concert balance it is less forward in the mix than with the Naxos recording, and therefore blends as much as it blings when the rest of the orchestra is also in full flow. Her sensitivity of touch is given space in the Dolente movement, and cuts through the Marciale e grotes coover the tightly disciplined playing of the orchestra, where the more immediate balance makes all the difference when compared to the more distant details of the Naxos recording. All of those kicking little slides and percussive touches hit home marvellously with the Wroclaw recording, and Daniel’s oboe sounds are a real treat.

On reflection I feel that this could become one of the most important competitions in the world. Its rare these days to have an international competition without a recording being sent as the first round. I have seen many times, and just recently how this can be abused. Apparently one candidate in the Geneva competition recently clearly wasn’t the person who played on the recording, and accountability is a genuine concern for students and teachers worldwide regarding who chooses and the criteria. I don’t agree that this is just the way of the world as an esteemed colleague in the USA recently said to me, it needs looking at again.

If the Tchaikovsky Conservatory manage to join the International Federation, a process that is on track, and if they sort out the Visa issues for applying students. It took SO much to get the visas for Kyeong Ham and his pianist and cost him a fortune, it will be placed to become the most important competition of its kind in the future. I must add that it also seems a little unfair that Kyeong had to pay 50% foreign witholding tax on his winnings and the resident Russians don’t….

The most fascinating thing for me has been not just the technical level of the Russian performers but their youth and musicality. Its really a new world out here.

I had an interesting chat with Valery Popov yesterday, he’s such a dynamo and good friend to music here. He was talking about the new oboe scene in Moscow and how positive it is. I also had a lovely farewell chat with Tamara Parshina, the Organising Chairwoman. She lived in London for several years in the old times, and told me with such a light in her eyes that she had danced with her husband at Buckingham Palace ‘not once but several times’.

I always have mixed feelings about leaving places I have bonded with and committed myself to in terms of work. I’m always excited to fly, I still love it, if not the check in procedure at airports, and I’m certainly happy to leave the Azerbaijani digs, despite being grateful for the strength of the radiators, the cold is awesome and penetrating, but mostly this time I’m sad to say goodbye to Philip Nodel and Varia, to Dima Bulgakov, and to Alexei Utkin, who have been the heart and soul of this experience for me. They represent the best musical side of what’s here and show the real welcoming heart of modern Russia, no visa required!

P.S.
I must thank James Turnbull for helping me with my website and for posting these messages for you to read. Thanks James!

The final of the competition today showed a hugely high standard. Alex Klein, who has recently been on the jury of the prestigious Geneva Competition, said the standard was far higher here and despite 4 of our finalists being teenagers he felt they would have given the Geneva lot a good run for their money. That may be partly because Geneva have a rather closed first round of just a recording, with an undisclosed panel. The Francophile bias was clear to see. Here we are open to anyone who can learn the hugely hard programme and get it from memory.

Today they played the Mozart Concerto and a beautiful arrangement of some of the Shostakovitch preludes for Violin and Piano. Alexei Utkin’s brother Mikhael did the arrangement, with just strings, and it feels like we suddenly have a new work for the repertoire for oboe and strings, and it’s very hard and very beautiful. It was a huge test to do both pieces together. Very few remained unscathed!

First to play was Emil Miroslawsky.  The orchestra and conductor seemed hell bent on rushing him right off the rails but his technique was very much up to it. He was on much better form today than in the semifinal, consistency has been a part of very few performances actually, indeed only the first and second prize winners showed elements of it.

Next to play was another young player, Ivan Kobylsky. I had heard him aged 12, when he was about a foot shorter, in the Barbirolli Isle of Man competition I used to be associated with. We gave him a special prize there, but sadly he really didn’t play his best today. Afterwards, at dinner, we found out why.

In a scandalous bit of bullying blackmail a certain orchestra that this young man occasionally gigs with, a famous one, lent him an oboe to play in the orchestra for a series of performances. They said to him loud and clear that if he didn’t play that oboe in our competition he wouldn’t be working with that organization again. Of course he was hugely uncomfortable to be playing a rancid old oboe for only 10 days before the competition and it proved to be a mistake for him. Even his own teacher didn’t know what was going on and is furious.

There is occasionally something of gangster loyalty to the brand name of oboe we chose to in the world of the double reed. Oboists are fairly famous for being gangsters anyway, they are often the one chosen to speak up to a conductor, I sacked a conductor once from the oboe seat. We are often chairmen or on the boards of our orchestras and politically involved. Even though 4 of the 5 judges here play Loree oboes they are from 4 different ends of the earth, with very different careers and sounds, and anyway the person that won doesn’t play a Loree, even though he just won one today! So poor Ivan didn’t play his best but is for sure a deeply gifted young man. I hope one day he will realise that allowing yourself to be bullied is counter productive but for now he has to live with his decision. At least he will be going in to that orchestra again…

Next up was my pupil Kyeong Ham, aged 17 from Korea. He was nervous because in the short rehearsal yesterday he had a big memory lapse and that is enough to spook a young player, but today he walked on looking very smart, smiling broadly to the audience, and settled down to give a performance of the Mozart Concerto that stole the hearts of the judges. I have my criticisms of it, and we will be working on that piece for years probably, but it was so fresh, so confident, so alive, and he had written his own startlingly brilliant cadenzas, even if they didn’t have quite enough thematic material in them and a little too much technique! I was immensely proud of him and continued to be as he played the fiendish Shostakovitch piece.

The next youngest player, Ivan Kobylsky came next. He started wonderfully well, with a really beautiful, focussed, dark tone, which was also amazingly well projected and I really thought Kyeong was going to have a run for his money. His sounds floated over the orchestra so effortlessly and even though he made a few slips they didn’t matter to me, but as it later showed they actually mattered very much to him. It really showed me how experience is a thing perhaps most valuable of all the different traits of the performer. After a couple more slips in the last movement he completely stopped playing and in a Russian language miscommunication with the conductor he jumped straight to the cadenza, missing out a great chunk of music. He never really, and quite unsurprisingly, recovered from that and I for one was very sorry for him. He’s just a year older than my oldest son, and I really felt the pressure for him. All of the judges felt we were dying as it went wrong, we didn’t dare breathe for about 3 minutes. I’m absolutely sure we will be hearing about this slim, fair haired young man in the future, and I hope he learned some lessons from what happened today.

Finally was the Novosibirsk born Maxim Khodyrev. The oldest of the competitors at the old age of 21(!) he proved his strength, stamina and massive technique from the outset. He has almost the perfect finger technique, despite huge tension in his right shoulder and arm. He is technically an oboist’s oboist, and I was literally open mouthed at some of the accuracy and speed of his playing. There was, however, a sense of closed-ness that let him down in the end. His perfection was beautiful to hear, and has required many years of hard work, but we never really saw who he is, just a broad shouldered handsome young dark haired man.

I’m sure it was a very useful experience for these young men to perform with an orchestra, despite the difficulties that orchestra clearly faced in finding 5 different tempi for Mozart and Shostakovitch and for the conductor in bringing in the band after all those cadenzas!

After hearing 5 Mozart Concertos and 5 Shostakovitchs we retired to our room and voted. We voted for people in places 1-5 so that the person, when you added up the scores, who had the lowest score was the winner. They then did some maths to work out the average place or something, it was mostly in Russian, and then translated into German. We had a clear first prize winner in Kyeong Ham. I couldn’t be more delighted for him and proud of all the hard work he put into it. It also appears that this Competition may be about to join the International Association of Music Competitions, which would mean that Kyeong would not have to do Military Service in Korea if they accept that this competition is included. Fingers crossed. Alain De Gourdon of Loree very much wanted Kyeong to have the first prize of the beautiful model 125 oboe, so we agreed to give him that too. It was revealed that Kyeong was the only performer who would have to pay a huge amount of tax on his earnings, and he brought his own pianist from Germany too and had endless expense getting a visa. I hope he goes hope with a little! Luckily he has also won the prize for the best performance of the new piece so that adds up nicely.

Maxim Khodyrev is the 2nd prize winner, not my choice actually but the marks spoke clearly. It turns out his instrument is very past it’s sell by date, and Alain De Gourdon agreed to give him a special extra prize of 50% discount on a new oboe. It’s typical of Alain to be so generous and thoughtful for young performers. Maxim also won, with our agreement, a gouging machine made by “reeds and stuff” who gave the prize. For the uninitiated a gouging machine takes part in the early part of the process of making oboe reeds. It’s a precision tool worth about 1300 euro.

3rd prize went to Emil Miroslawsky. He already has a gouging machine and a slightly better oboe so we were happy to give him just the award. Alex Klein also announced that all the finalists were invited for free to his amazing festival in Brazil in January, FEMUSC. Its a full scholarship, without travel, and very generous indeed. I will be teaching there at that time, and they will get daily access to me, chamber music, orchestra and hundreds of concerts to go to.

We were happy to dispatch our duties honourably and we then met with each candidate to discuss their performance and answer any questions they had.
Its a difficult thing to do well, but useful for them I hope.

After putting on layers and layers of clothes and the dead furry thing on my head again we headed for Cafe Pushkin, possibly the most expensive upmarket restaurant in all of Moscow, and had a beautiful meal where, despite the informal gathering, there were very formal, Russian style speeches honouring all of us. Very serious, very enjoyable, and I also bumped into Karl Lagerfeld in the loo, which rather made my evening. He was putting back on his leather fingerless mittens after washing his hands and I said ‘good evening master’…. I know…I don’t know quite what got into me, I was a bit flustered. There was a body guard who clearly doubles as a model at the door who was looking very nervous.

Tomorrow we have the prizegiving and final concert which Laszlo. Alex are missing, and I’m expecting a lot of speeches….

I discovered today that my Mozart Concerto on You Tube, first movement, has had nearly 160,000 hits. I’m slightly astounded but delighted about it. You can see it onyoutube.com and type in nicholasdanieloboe into the search box or go to http://m.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&client=mv-google&hl=en-GB&v=DhygJyCvYeA Also on there is the Elliot Carter Concerto I love so much playing, and Oboists might like to know I did both performances with the same reed 2 weeks apart. I got told off by my eldest son the other day for wearing make up to play on those performances, but I tried to explain that it was with strong TV lights and I had my own BBC make up lady who said I would look like a corpse without it. Anyway I sweated so much as iot was not air conditioned and mid summer that there wasn’t much makeup left at the end so it didn’t count!!

Our concerto final is at 14.00 today, with a permanent, professional but young orchestra specifically put together and paid to play for the conducting department of the Moscow Conservatoire. Brilliant idea that, and maybe a reason why Russian conductors are going retain a strong presence in the music world in the future. Its conducted by Anatoli Levin, who I haven’t met yet.

I had a text message from Kyeong Ham saying he had had a big memory slip in his (only) rehearsal with them yesterday. I texted back something like ‘memory schmemory, enjoy your first ever Mozart!’ Of course he has me here so he’s not completely alone, but actually I can’t see him too much or support him openly in discussions, as that would be wrong. In fact I’m not sure how we will be voting today, with marks or positions, so far we just voted Da or Niet, and I don’t know whether I will be, or should be, allowed to vote for him at all, I don’t mean to win or not, I mean at all.  The same goes for Alexei Utkin who has 3 in the final. I guess we will vote in a certain way, all of us honestly from our hearts, and that if its a clear result then no further votes need to be taken. If it looks like one person’s vote is skewing the result then we may have to vote in a different way.

I have a feeling that it will be clear and unanimous, so well has this panel bonded and, judging from the Masterclasses I heard, so well do we contrast and concur with each other’s style.

I could also have a few choice words about how badly I slept last night and how I appear to have a fabulous selection of Azerbaijani bed bugs bites. Clearly  all the wakeful tossing and turning in my little bed appears to have woken them from the depths of my mattress to feed on my wrists and ankles. What joy.

Heading off to meet and greet at the Loree oboe stall at the Conservatoire now, and to let the father of my oboe, Alain De Gourdon, see his child who cracked a month ago and needs comfort! Thence onwards to hear our host, well he feels like our host to me, Philip Nodel, play a trio sonata concert on Baroque Oboe. I hope he doesn’t feel too nervous as almost the whole oboe jury will be there!  Then I’m finding a pharmacy and some Russian sleeping pills.

We started at 10.30 this morning and heard ten 45 minute oboe recitals which had 2 set works, a piece of italian fluff by La Gioconda composer Amilcare Ponchielli, and Echo by S Baiterekov, which was the winner of a competition for pieces for solo Oboe. I don’t know which was more painful on repeated hearing!

Baiterekov seems to have studied several of the books of contemporary Oboe techniques and not fully digested any of them. The piece was a concoction of different effects strung together with not enough clarity of instruction to the performer or systematic through thought to make it successful or enjoyable . It was SO hard for the performers to be motivated enough to learn and make something of it but a couple did, and one of those has won the award for the best performance of it-to be revealed after the final. When they complained to me about it I said, you want me to take a 50% salary cut? Half my money is made working hard playing new music, 3 World premieres in October this year alone. It was a good test of their gumption and commitment to insist they play it.

The other work was a choice from a list, we heard Pierre Sancan, Duttileux, Hindemith, Poulenc and Pavel Haas.

As we go through this competition our job as jurors certainly gets harder even if we get closer as a panel, and I realised this morning that doing it scrupulously professionally and fairly takes a lot of self awareness and some flexibility. The cycles of the day, the morning sleepiness, we are 3 hours ahead of the UK here, the zipp of a post coffee upper, the weight of the post lunch downer, trying to refresh ones ears after an out of tune or harsh sounding performer in time to be at a calm, open level for the next one, all those events require one to notice them and adapt one’s concentration forthwith.  I noticed the buzz of the post Russian coffee, leading to both a lack of concentration but also to the slight intensifying of the listening after the first sip. Salutory.

One major aspect of this competition is memory. All pieces except the new piece were to be played without sheet music, and the general level of memory was very high indeed, occasionally impressively so. This round was a big test for memory, especially for those performers from outside the Russian system, which is more familiar with memory playing.

The average age of the five finalists we have unanimously chosen is 18 years 7 months. 4 of them are teenagers, and one is 21. They are all male, there were 2 female semifinalists but they didn’t make it. 4 are from Russia, one from Korea, my 17 year old pupil Kyeong Ham, 3 are pupils of Alexei Utkin here in Moscow, and one is a student of Dimitry Bulgakov, a young professor here at Tchaikovsky who studied partly in Germany. Yes, not only Policemen are looking younger but teachers and highly gifted oboists too!

Its not surprising that Alexei’s students are in the final, he is a great and a major teacher here and a powerful benevolent force in Russian music. He has a wonderful calm mystique, disappearing every evening somewhere mysterious, probably to play, when we finish work and go out to have fun. Its unusual that such a powerful person politically is such a good person and such a talented one. I can only think that the politics fell his way by accident and he is making the best of it, but maybe I’m naïve, he probably worked hard for it!  He and I are loving sitting next to each other and sharing high note and trill fingerings between performances, we are finding ourselves in deep accord about our perceptions, which is reassuring.

A whiff of scandal floated up today when it turned out Alexei’s students who had prepared Henri Duttileux’ Sonata had not prepared the 3rd movement. This is because Duttileux personally told Alexei (and me and Laszlo Hadady incidentally) that he thought the last movement was like ‘bad Poulenc’ and would prefer us not to play it. One has to bear in mind that his manuscripts have to be wrestled out of his hands by his wife, so self critical he is, and he is famous for writing little and destroying much. A sort of modern day Henri Duparc.

My student Mr Ham had prepared all 3 movements and we had to scrabble around discussing as we could whether other people should leave out last movements and whether Kyeong should play it too. There was a lot of flapping around and in the end I just said ‘Niet’ and he didn’t play it.

The same veto goes for the insane idea of suddenly combining the oboe jury with the horn jury for the concerto final. Lots of talk on that subject then I just said ‘niet’. I’m very friendly all the time, very easy, optimistic, positive, but occasionally a light goes on and I’m the tough one!

This afternoon the owner of my Oboe Company, Alain de Gourdon from Loree, arrived from Paris and was instantly beseiged with star struck Russian and Belorussians. He is a delightful, elegant, charming and quietly spoken man with a genius ear and pair of hands. My oboe literally sighs and purrs after he works on it. We had a dinner with the jury gang without Alexei who had mysteriously glided off somewhere, and it was great to talk oboes and geeky stuff and, I admit it, bitch a tiny bit about the mistakes some other makers make with their instruments, mostly getting them less and less focussed and more dark, colourless and floaty, the same as Boosey and Hawkes did after the 2nd War with Clarinets- now thankfully reversing itself.

Apparently Loree are in a bidding process to sell over 230 Oboes to Venezuela and the S Bolivar Youth Orchestra. That’s a massive order for any of these makers. Loree are so consistently good and reliable and long lived,  I’m sure they would be the best investment. It will be decided in early December.

We have a day off tomorrow, I may try and find a church service and see the little body of Lenin again if I can face it. So far its been 11 degrees warmer here than in the UK, but snow has just arrived and the temperature is dropping quickly.  I have the Lapland furry hat all ready….

The finalists names, in playing order:
Ivan Kobylsky, 18, Russia.
Emil Miroslavsky, 19, Russia.
Ivan Fefilov, 18, Russia.
Maxim Khodyrev, 21, Russia
Kyeong Ham, 17, Korea.

The final is on monday.

It was a chance for some people to talk about themselves a lot, to say how dreadful everything is, Russian style, and for others to try and focus on the problem.

Interesting thing about the 2nd class wind player musician thing here: apparently Piano and Violin only are see as the thoroughbreds and winds have been traditionally seen as rude, rural and vulgar. They are going to have to work hard and very intelligently to change this, but a problem I have is that when you have artists like Alexei Utkin, or Valery Popov, oboe and bassoon respectively, it rather disproves the rule.

Anyway I found myself speaking very angrily about the UK at the current moment, politically, which I didn’t intend to do, but it came out like that and I stand by it. Its the second wave of attacks on music services and provision since the 80s, both under conservative rule-but with a little help from their friends this time. I was so proud of my eldest son Alastair who is studying musical theatre at Arts Educational School in London for going to the protests in London yesterday but saddened, as was he, that idiots (not anarchists which somehow suggests they have a brain cell) ransacked the protest and made it unsafe for them.

The problem seems to me to be that on a national scale the Arts are understood as having a valuable contribution, even if the Arts Council is not, but on a more local level the more rural approach is that music services can be slashed and burned and there will be less fall out than if other services are. Its all about politics locally, not about the big picture. I wonder whether Mr Cameron’s 2 million pound question about ‘what makes us happy’ will include anything artistic at all. We wait to see. We also wait to see whether there will be any musicians to supply the orchestras in 10 years time.

I heard classes today by my fellow judges Laszlo Hadady and Alex Klein which I found deeply inspiring. I just melt when either of them play one note.

In my own class, amongst others, I taught 3 twelve year olds from Belarus and one from Moscow, who were brilliant. I must confess that I am deep down a little concerned that they may be being pushed and drilled rather, but time will tell; for now their freedom to play and their open hearts are completely inspiring to me.

I was made aware today of the thirst for information and contact with other musical cultures that exists here. We were all treated like rock stars and with the deepest respect. The intensity of the Russian gaze into one’s eyes is quite remarkable.

I have completely fallen in love with Moscow. This is my 3rd visit here and this time I see big changes, in the people as well as in the City. It is a truly great metropoli, and for what seems like the better. In its way its as great as London or New York, and we are also being taken to some really great restaurants! Tonight we feasted smoke free (for once) on gorgeous tapas style food and unlimited spicy Mulled Wine. We were joined by one of the star solo oboists from the Bolshoi, who had taken Alex Klein to see Wozzek there tonight. Stories came thick and fast about opera happenings, such as the horse at the Bolshoi who produced a 3 litre urination which was heading on a raked stage fast downhill for the prompt box, but which got diverted from there manually to the pit and INTO the actual 2nd bassoon in the pit in a great frothing flood; then a story about the late great oboist Pierre Pierlot, which may be apocryphal, but goes thus: Paris Opera, Carmen, first interval, Pierlot finds a donkey backstage and decides to, erm…..how can I put this delicately, manually ‘stimulate it’ just before the 2nd act starts. Donkey goes on with one and a half meters of stimulation and the audience laughs so hard the curtain has to be brought down. Its opera, baby, but not as we know it!

The 2nd round is tomorrow, with a horrendous and confusingly vague new set work. We are all looking forward to hearing what our choices will do, especially the 6 that got unanimous da’s from the Panel.

There are some really original talents there, most of the best of them are teenagers too.

There is one competitor who we gave a special prize to already, some money. He has faced seemingly unsurmountable difficulties to achieve a beautiful level of playing and has developed ears like a bat’s. He is Vasiili Belyavin from Sverdlosk up in the Urals. He is unable to see, and he asked me to talk with him after the results to give him my impressions.

He speaks beautiful English and is obviously highly intelligent. I told him that my impression of his playing was that he was listening so sensitively that he maybe didn’t realise how he needed to use the room and play to its 4 corners. I have spent some time since he played yesterday mentally putting myself in his shoes and imagining not know where the jury where (on the balcony) how many people were in the hall (30 in 600 seats) how far away the edge of the stage was (2 feet only). No wonder he sounded a bit timid, but he is a wonder anyway. He doesn’t have access to Braile music but learns from repetition through his teacher.

Kyeong my student is through, which is great. His style is very different to many others here, more Mercedes, but he is a star and I am so proud of him. I will wait to see whether I am allowed to vote for him in the following rounds. Today he was one of 6 who got 5 votes out of 5 judges to go through.

We took 10 out of 15, which was generous, I felt, but its good to give a chance to the players who habve prepared the whole repertoire. Tomorrow the 3 jury from outside Russia are giving masterclasses for the people that didn’t get through, it was judged unfair to teach still current competitors. There is, however, a major party from Belarus, and some huge young talents not even in their teens. I was there last year and it was something extraordinary I experienced. Such warmth, such talent. Some of them will also play tomorrow, which I really look forward to.

I was so happy when an adorable little girl who I met there came up to me today and literally flung her arms around me kissing my hands. She is all of 11. In the UK, child services would be alerted, here, gentle smiles from her watching Mother.

The horn jury have been scandalous! Horn is going on concurrently to us, sadly without the Chairman, as I reported earlier, but with champion Bassoonist Valery Popov as Chair. Apparently one judge, a professor here, told his students not to learn the prescribed work (itself the winner of a competition) because it was terrible. Chaos ensued but somehow they seem to be through it. Its always potentially volatile here, which makes life interesting!

I learned today that for the finals the Oboe and Horn juries were to combine. I complained loudly about this as I feel that our Oboe jury is bonding well, discussing priorities, sharing ideas, and finding common ground. Adding a gallery of horn players will change the chemistry completely and I am against it. Luckily the committee agree and it won’t be like that.

I had a wonderful walk around Moscow this evening, which was looking clear skied and getting colder, in the footsteps of Stanislawsky, gazing in awe at the Bolshoi and gasping at the madly expensive clothes shops, followed by dinner with Mr and Mrs Nodel and Laszlo and lots of vodka. Hoping to sleep well. I really love this city.

15 doesn’t sound like very many I suppose, but the programme is really exacting and has to be played all from memory, apart from the new composition, a winning piece from an in Conservatoire Competition by Khazak composer Sanzhar Baiterekov. In contrast to almost all the major competitions everyone here who applies gets to play, rather than having a recorded screening process. Highly unreliable in my experience. Part of the joy of having the whole gang here is the possibility for international friendships to be made, for feedback from the jury, masterclasses, for education in the broadest sense. As Alexei Utkin, fellow juror and Russian Oboe Legend said to me today ‘everything is for them’ pointing to the stage.

The standard is high, in some cases exceptionally high, and there are some outstanding players, many of them very young. My own student Kyeong Ham played this afternoon very beautifully but as always was annoyed with anything small that went wrong. At 17 he was the youngest to play today.

Oboists grit your teeth for this, they had to play Bach Partita first two movements in A or G minor, Schumann Romance number two, dubbed by Alex Klein as ‘la muerte’, and Flight of the Bumble Bee in F minor! I’m timing all the Bumble Bees and will report times later. So far at least 2 have broken the world record!

There is a lovely English woman here who is studying in Moscow, Emma Vallender. She was previously at the Royal College in London. She is a very rare explorer from the UK into International Competitions. Who knows why…. Theories anyone?

Sad news came today that the Chair of the Horn jury, running concurrently with our Oboe Competition, conductor Vladimir Ziva, had an appalling stroke early this morning. He’s the second chair of this jury to be struck, the previous one died 2 weeks after being chosen as Chair. So far the Oboe jury is unscathed… We are all wishing Mr Ziva well and hoping for the best for him.

Tomorrow we hear the last 5 competitors and choose at least 8 to go through to the 2nd round. I’m writing this listening to live Polish -Marroccan-jazz-folk-fusion in the bar of an Art Hotel opposite the Kremlin after two near perfect Mojitos made with 20 mint leaves each…