Enlightenment, please?

JDCMB has had an astonishing number of hits today from people in America doing Google searches on JASCHA HEIFETZ BIRTHPLACE.

I've been there. Here it is, above - photographed during my trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, in June 2005. But why is everyone looking for it now? Have I missed something?

UPDATE, Sunday 11.50am: thank you. Mystery solved: I'm informed that it was a crossword puzzle clue! Mad props to whoever set the crossword.

Tomorrow, Saturday 19 January...

On Saturday 19th, tomorrow evening, I will be interviewing the inimitable John Lill about his life, career and strong views on the state of the musical nation in the pre-concert event at the Royal Festival Hall. Kick-off is at 6.15 and admission is free. Come and say hello!

Later in the evening John is playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.1 and the programme also includes Rachmaninov's Second Symphony (to me the aural equivalent of vodka with chocolate). Roberto Minczuk conducts the London Philharmonic.

38 seconds of Toscha Seidel

Mad props to Philippe Graffin for sending us a link to this clip showing the utterly incredible violinist Toscha Seidel playing a few tantalizing seconds of a Brahms Hungarian Dance.

Seidel, whose tone could burn down a house, was a one-time rival of Heifetz in the class of the great (Hungarian) teacher Leopold Auer, but I remember hearing once that Heifetz was considered the tough cookie who could survive a heavy-duty international career and was therefore selected for pushing. The results go without saying. Seidel never emerged from his shadow and ended up in Hollywood, where he performed on the soundtrack to Intermezzo (Ingrid Bergman's debut) and recorded Korngold's Much Ado About Nothing suite with the composer. A discussion about Seidel on www.violinist.com, which I've just found, also suggests that he played in a band in Vegas. Oy.

If anyone has access to any more film of Seidel, we slidey violin fans would be forever indebted if you were to post it to Youtube, pleasepleaseplease.

Bewildered of SW14

Puzzled by news of the stand-off between Russia and the UK over, of all things, the British Council. My own contact with this organisation consisted of two green and pleasant years, some while ago, editing a magazine named Soundings which helped to promote British music of all types and was distributed via BC offices around the world. A nicer, more mild-mannered and traditionally British bunch you couldn't hope to find. I believe that the gentleman who then headed the music section eventually left to become a poet.

Perhaps it's just the old schoolyard story: the quiet, sensitive ones are the easiest targets for the bullies...Otherwise, this could very easily become a latter-day Graham Greene novel.

Meanwhile it looks as if the planned exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St. Petersburg, will go ahead, opening on 26 January.

Little goes large!

Back from hols, missing the sun...but the limelight isn't far away. It's firmly on Tasmin Little, whose free download The Naked Violin went live on Monday and promptly attracted so many hits that it briefly crashed the server. She's going great guns with 12-13,000 downloads per day, articles in most of the papers and music magazines that count (see mine today in The Independent) and masses of radio and TV coverage coming up too. She'll be live on BBC1 on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday at 9am, talking and playing. Don't miss the music itself - download here!