Hot on the heels of Leeds, Moscow has declared its participants for this year's Tchaikovsky Competition. In four categories - piano (61 accepted), violin (50), cello (49), voice (40 male, 39 female) - there are only two from the UK, and they are both pianists: Oleksandr Grynyuk and Alexander Ullman (who is indeed going for 'the triple'). Quite a few non-UK nationals are studying here, though, including, we're told, six at the RCM.
Among the female singers, all but nine of 39 are Russian. Your grasp of cyrillic, though, has to be rather good to determine exactly who they are. I find it somewhat unsettling to log in to the site to read the list, only to discover that Russian contestants are listed in cyrillic lettering, along with one from Belarus and one from Moldova. Everyone else is in our plain old usual alphabet. Honest, guv. Have a look.
