Like that lurking feeling of unease that sits in your brain the morning after a nightmare, the weekly chart round up returns:
As usual please post a chart from a country you have an interest in, along with any commentary.
Remember no more than a couple of Youtube embeds each to keep the diary loading time down!
It's also only a week until that festival of top down European popular culture - Eurovision. This week saw the vaguely related Eurovision Young Musicians competition.
More below:
The most interesting thing about this week is that whilst Eurovision is next week (24th May) we have just seen the Eurovision Young Musicians 2008 in Wien, which predictably enough is not a stage for Sven's daughter to break into the European scene (in competition with estHer?) but is instead a classical music competition:
Greek clarinet player Dionysios Grammenos was awarded the Eurovision Young Musician prize for his interpretation of the IV movement from the Concerto pour Clarinette et Orchestre by Jean Françaix.
The seven, young finalists, initially chosen from sixteen European contestants aged no more than 19, performed live during the Gala Final which marked the opening of the Wiener Festwochen on Friday night at the Rathausplatz (Vienna City Hall Square). The young musicians were accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Aleksandar Markovic, in front of an audience of tens of thousands.
The winning contestants were chosen by a top-class international jury presided over by Sir Roger Norrington, one of the most acclaimed English conductors. The other members of the jury were: Alison Balsom, a highly acclaimed trumpet artist, who was named best young British performer at the 2006 classical Brit awards, Jeanette de Boer, an outstanding pianist from the Netherlands, who regularly plays as a soloist at concerts and international festivals throughout Europe, Ranko Markovic, Director of the Music School of Vienna, Lars Anders Tomter, one of today's most outstanding violists from Norway and Günter Voglmayr , a flute musician from Austria, member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Eurovision Young Musicians is one of the most important international, classical music competitions and is held every two years. Created in 1982, the aim of the competition is to offer a stage to young talent in the field of classical music and help them embark on an international career.
And now back to the usual, low-brow focus of the diary: ;-)
