...And they're off! It's a race to the finish between Dudamel with the Berlin Phil on German TV's ARD and Thielemann with the Dresden Staatskapelle on ZDF for the big New Year's Eve musical celebration! Who will win the race for the hearts and minds of the German TV viewers tonight?... Norman Lebrecht has more on this extraordinary contest here.

Anyone got Sir Paul McCartney's phone number? Please tell him his country needs him.

Music education in the UK's state schools is likely to be decimated by a fourfold attack involving local council cutbacks on peripatetic music teachers, the withdrawal of £83.5m from central government earmarked for providing music teaching, the exclusion of music from the subjects eligible for the planned new Baccalaureate and the withdrawal of all government funding for arts degrees.

 PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST YOUR COMPUTER... It's the Winter Solstice. It's the end of 2010. And here at JDCMB, it's PARTY TIME!

The snowclouds are gathering around the Cyberposhplace. But this being Virtualsville, CyberParkLane is gritted to perfection and we can both enjoy the glittering snow and get from A to B without breaking a leg en route. So no stinting on the glamour, please! I hope you have brought your fake fur and a Trilby. Please step in through the ballroom entrance, leave your snowboots and Yaktrax in the cloackroom and help yourself to some cyberhot-chocolate specially imported from the Café Europejska, Krakow. We'll be serving borscht, pierogi and poppyseed cake later ...

This will probably be the last Friday Historical of Chopin Year, so it's a very special one: Arthur Rubinstein plays Chopin's Etude Op.25 No.1 in A flat major in recital in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. This was in 1960-something. The picture looks older, the sound seems newer and the playing is a sliver of timeless wonder. I'm not sure that Chopin could be any more perfect.