Oxford Philomusica play Tchaikovsky, 8/2/2008

“Worthless, unplayable”, said Nikolai Rubenstein of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto soon after it was written.  Yet it has become a keystone of the Romantic repertoire, and Rubenstein later admitted how wrong he initially was.

Stephen Hough’s rendition of the concerto was the highlight of the evening as the Oxford Philomusica (the University of Oxford’s resident orchestra) played a programme consisting of Prichard’s ‘Seven Pieces for Orchestra’ and Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto number one and symphony number six (‘Pathetique’).

Deborah Prichard (Worcester College) wrote ‘Seven pieces for string orchestra’ having been inspired by Chagall’s stained glass windows at Tudely Church, Kent.  The work was commissioned to commemorate the death of Sarah d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, who drowned in 1963 aged twenty-one.  ‘Seven pieces’ is palindromic in structure, with the first, fourth and final movements related and movements two and six, and three and five, mirror-images of each other.

Stephen Hough’s virtuosic playing stunned the audience so much that they applauded after just the first movement of the piece.  The contrast between the quiet, lyrical sections (such as the start of the second movement, which felt as intimate as much chamber music) and grand themes was brought out wonderfully by both orchestra and pianist alike.

After the interval, another large romantic work was perhaps a little much for the audience (especially given the uncomfortable seats in the Sheldonian theatre!), and the outpouring of emotion so typical of Tchaikovsky was a little hard to take in.  The symphony is based on life, growing out of nothing in the first movement and fading away at the end.  The ensuing silence showed the audience’s appreciation of the performance.

The Oxford Philomusica’s next concert at the Sheldonian Theatre will be on 6^th March, featuring a complete semi-staged performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni(tickets available from Tickets Oxford 01865 305305).

by Robin Thompson, C24 Music Editor

I think we all agree now that China and India are the economic powers of the future. But do the German media do justice to this, or are people over here left in a puddle of ignorance about Asia's emerging tiger and dragon? A fellow German year abroad student reports (in English!) for the radio station Deutsche Welle.

Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external sites

95 per cent of international students rate Britain as being an “attractive or very attractive” place to study, research has shown.The study, undertaken by i-graduate, asked 11,000 students from over 143 countries about their perceptions of university life abroad.The US is still deemed the most attractive destination for foreign students, but the results of the study show that the UK is increasingly challenging US popularity.Many students view the UK as a safe place to study, where they may obtain reputable qualifications and receive high-quality teaching.
Read more in this week's Cherwell.By Sophie Pitman

Holywell Music Room, 3rd February 2008

Every Sunday morning at the Holywell Music Room some of Britain’s finest musicians come to display their talents. Yet whilst the concert venue is often full, very few students are present. Perhaps few students are interested in classical music? But this is hard to believe with hundreds across the university involved with various choirs, orchestras and other ensembles.

Then, maybe students cannot afford to go and see concerts? However, the £8 entry fee (including coffee at the King’s Arms following the concert) is a small one in comparison to the amount spent on nights out to clubs.

Last Sunday, the Adderbury Ensemble performed at the Holywell Music Room coffee concert. The group was formed in 1986, and after initially performing solely in the north Oxfordshire village of Adderbury, now performs throughout Europe. It also helped to set up the Oxford coffee concert series, and will record two CDs in 2008.

The concert opened with Vaughan-Williams’ ‘Phantasy’ quintet, a work for strings that is much less well-known than several of his other works written just after the end of the First World War. His love of the viola is clear from the opening theme of the first movement, and, judging by the audience’s excited chatter at the end the piece, the rendition was very well received.

The second and final piece of the concert was Mozart’s String Quintet in G minor, k. 516. Despite being well played, its tragic and grave nature made it unremarkable after the Vaughan-Williams.

Next Sunday’s coffee concert at the Holywell Music Room is at 11.15am, where the Cremona string quartet will be playing quartets by Beethoven and Bartok (tickets available from Tickets Oxford 01865 305305).

by Robin Thompson

At the halfway stage of this term and the three-quarter mark of the JCR League season, there are still many vital issues to be decided. For all but the giants of the Premier League, a successful season means only one thing- promotion. The battle for places in the top tier of the JCR League is still far from over, while the Division Two title race looks like it might go right down to the wire. Most teams only have a handful of games left to play, but fans and players alike will no doubt be nervously biting their nails as the promotion run-in reaches its climax.

DIVISION ONE
In Division One, St Catz are undoubtedly in the driving seat, as they lead second place Magdalen by a comparatively massive seven points. They face a potentially tricky run-in, including fellow promotion chasers Christ Church both home and away, but should be nailed on for a return to the promised land. Beyond that, it really is anyone’s guess who will claim the remaining promotion spots. Second-place Magdalen are in a strong position as they have a game in hand on the teams around them. Their run-in also features three eminently winnable home games. However, Christ Church are still far from out of it. In spite of a few shaky defensive displays, they are in reasonable form. Having said that, they still have to take on St Catz twice in quick succession. Any slip up for them would allow fourth place Exeter to perhaps steal in and grab a second consecutive promotion. They should definitely be seen as dark horses for a promotion spot, bearing in mind that they are still to play bottom of the table Somerville twice. The likes of LMH, Keble and Balliol, all tied on 18 points, would still regard themselves as in with a chance, but a late promotion charge from any of them would be a real surprise.

DIVISION TWO
The Division One promotion race may be tight, but it is nothing compared to the epic battle going on in Oxford’s basement division. Perhaps as many as six of the division’s nine teams are still in with a shout of promotion. Univ are currently leading the way on 25 points, but Merton-Mansfield trail by only three points and crucially have two games in hand. Adding further spice to the matter, the top two are still yet to play each other this season. The two games between the pair, scheduled for the next two Fridays, could decide the destination of the Division Two title. However, the chasing pack are still hot on their heels. Corpus-Linacre currently sit in third, just two points behind Merton. They also have the services of JCR League top scorer Luke Bennett at their disposal. Having said this, recent defeats to Univ both home and away will have come as a massive blow to their hopes of going up. A few months ago St John’s looked out of it, but a fine run of results, including a 5-0 home win over a solid Merton-Mansfield team, have propelled them to fourth place. It would be a real surprise if they overhauled Univ’s lead though, bearing in mind the five-point gap. Behind John’s lie Trinity and Pembroke, both teams relegated from Division One last season. Both teams have struggled slightly, and on first glance look out of the promotion shake-up. They both have games in hand on the top teams though, and while they would no doubt prefer to have points on the board, they may still play a role in the run-in.

UNIVERSITY 1 CORPUS-LINACRE 0 
University entertained Corpus-Linacre on Friday in a game of vital importance to the Division Two promotion race. Just before Christmas, top of the table Univ travelled to Corpus and came from behind to win 2-1. It was a real smash and grab job, and one Corpus fan remarked ‘at least Dick Turpin wore a mask’. There was little doubt that the away side was out for revenge today.  
Having said this, Univ’s home record this season has been near perfect, and despite again missing several important players, they started confidently. In the early stages, the prolific Will Stuart was twice played through, but on both occasions rolled the ball inches wide of the post. Corpus looked in defiant mood though, and defended stoutly against the home side’s free-flowing football. The game descended into a war of attrition, and midway through the first half Univ midfielder Owen Goodfield was harshly booked for a marginally late challenge. The first half was not one for the purists, as clear-cut opportunities were few and far between. Univ are certainly not the most physically strong team in the division, but were forced to match the aggressive approach of the away side today. The first half ended with the scores locked at 0-0, with little indication as to who might eventually come out on top. 
The second half began as the first period had concluded, with both teams looking tense.  However, just after the hour mark, the decisive incident of the match occurred. Univ’s Will Stuart was again played through, but this time was impeded by the Corpus keeper, who came charging out of goal and pole-axed the striker, leaving him dazed and confused. The resultant penalty was of course left to top scorer James Gingell, who confidently powered the ball into the net. The keeper went the right way but found the strike too hot to handle. Univ took a priceless one-goal lead. 
As a result, Corpus were forced to throw men forward in an attempt to salvage something from the game.  They were incensed not to be awarded a penalty with just ten minutes left on the clock, while at the other end, Chris Taylor came agonisingly close to doubling the home side’s advantage. His toe-poked effort was well turned away by the Corpus keeper. As the game went into stoppage time, Corpus’ efforts became more desperate, but in truth they never really threatened the home side’s back four, who were excellent throughout. Univ’s celebrations on the final whistle befitted those of a side who had just taken a huge step towards promotion, while Corpus were left to ponder another narrow defeat at the hands of the High Street club.

A woman was raped on Sunday evening as she walked near a children’s play area in Cowley.
The attack happened just yards from Cowley police station as the nineteen year old walked along Between Towns Road. It is unknown if she is a student.
After the attack, the man marched the woman – possibly at knifepoint – to a cash point where he tried to force her to withdraw money.
However, she was able to alert door staff at The William Morris Wetherspoon's pub.
Police have described the attacker as aged 16 or 17 and about 6ft tall, wearing a dark jumper with multi-coloured horizontal stripes and a baseball cap. He was said to be riding a silver bicycle.
A 16-year-old male was last night in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of rape and robbery.
Police are keen to speak to anyone who may have seen or heard anything.
Call police on 08458 505505 or speak to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.
Read More in this week’s Cherwell.

Last week we reached the conclusion that, in spite of Newton’s Law of Cooling, in certain circumstances, hot liquids cool faster than cold liquids. William Frass at some of the possible explanations scientists have come up with so far…Conduction Imagine two containers of equal geometry and material, one containing hot water and another containing an equal amount of cold water. Both of these are placed on a shelf in a freezer. Now any frost that collects on the container is likely to be melted by the warmth of a container made of a good conductor.This has the effect, later on, when the water inside has cooled somewhat, such that the frost outside refreezes, of creating very good thermal contact between, say, the cold freezer shelf and the vessel of water. Hence heat is drawn out of warmer water more quickly. The cooler container on the other hand won’t have the opportunity to melt any surrounding frost and will just sit on top of a layer of ice, which isn’t the best conductor of heat – so takes longer to cool down.This account seeks to ‘explain away’ the Mpemba effect in terms of bad experimental technique: if you don’t allow one container to gain better thermal contact, you won’t observe the effect. Well, the effect of conduction can be dramatically reduced by using a vessel made of a better insulator, in fact Mpemba himself used wooden buckets and still observed the effect. So assuming measures are taken to prevent conduction, convection seems the next likely candidate.
Convection As the warmer water cools rapidly at the surface it will develop convection currents within the container since warmer water is, at most temperatures, less dense than cooler water – creating an uneven distribution of temperature with hot water nearer the surface.So when the hot-water container reaches the temperature the cool water container started at, the hotter water is nearer to the surface, the so-called “hot-top”. This assists quicker evaporation and hence faster cooling since there is greater evaporation from hot water than from cold. This shows that the initially hot water cools faster, but of course it also has further to go. So whether it actually reaches 0°C first, is not immediately clear. In fact, to know which one finishes first would require theoretical modelling of the convection currents, which nobody has done. To add to the confusion, there are “cold tops”. Cooler water is not always more dense than hot water – below 4°C cold water is actually less dense than the surrounding warm water. This means that once the coolest part of the water gets below 4°C it rises to the top and soon freezes – creating a insulating plug slowing down further cooling. Convection currents in the warmer water might help to reduce this process.
EvaporationThe next phenomenon is evaporation. An evaporating substance will lose mass, which takes with it an associated latent heat of vaporisation. With less mass, the hot water has less heat to lose, and so it cools faster. Assuming this explanation, hot water freezes first, but only by virtue of the fact there's less of it to freeze. George Kell actually conducted some calculations that showed that if the water cooled solely by evaporation with a uniform temperature, the warmer water would freeze before the cooler water.This explanation is often citied by many as the explanation of the Mpemba effect – whilst it’s very important other experiments show that it cannot be the sole mechanism that drives the Mpemba effect. Dr Osborne measured the mass lost due to evaporation in his original experiment and found it incomparably less than that predicted by Kell’s article.
Super-coolingFinally, the last effect to offer an explanation is super-cooling. Once water reaches its freezing point, water molecules attempt to adopt the lowest energy state, which is an ice crystal. However they cannot do this without first encountering some irregularity in their surroundings, a nucleation site, which forces them to arrange themselves in a certain way, allowing an ice crystal to develop.
But if the molecules do not encounter such an irregularity they continue to cool below zero whilst still remaining in the liquid phase for a while longer. This is super-cooling. So a liquid that undergoes super-cooling will take longer to freeze since it stays liquid despite having reached 0°CThere have been some claims that initially hot water doesn’t super cool for very long – say only as far –2°C whereas initially cool water may remain super cooled as far –8°C. This is no more an explanation than a replacement problem – how can water remember what temperature is was at before it reached 0°C ? One possible explanation is that a heated water has more of its dissolved gases expelled in the boiling process. This supposedly helps the flow of convection currents and thus assists in cooling.But one would expect that with less dissolved gas to act as a nucleation point, the boiled water which starts off hotter would super cool for longer whilst the molecules searched for a comparatively rare nucleation point. Supporters of the super cooling theory point to symmetric molecules like nitrogen and methane, which are non-polar solvents, the solubility of which don’t necessarily vary linearly with temperature.More recently in 2005 Monwhea Jeng published some work with the most probable conclusion there simply isn’t a unique explanation, certainly not yet, as to why hot water sometimes cools more quickly than cold. So it’s tempting to believe, since freezing requires sufficiently cool molecules to encounter nucleation sites that it could largely be a matter of probability. This might explain why the Mpemba effect can sometimes be hard to reproduce and doesn’t always lead to consistent results.

Leon Harrington and Connie Han host a special student debate on the Government's recent approval of hybrid embryo research. Leon and Connie are joined by Elizabeth Bennett (Magdalen), Maja Choma (Magdalen), and Namrata Turaga (St John's).Download the podcast here . If you would like to take part in a future Science Podcast, please email [email protected] What are you views on this issue? Join the debate below.