In a world suffused with competitions for young musicians, the BBC's is one of the most useful. To start with, it offers a lot of broadcast time. It also offers high-level U.K. engagements. And the BBC Young Musician finalists for 2014 have been announced.
Not only that, arguably the competition's most successful ever winner, Nicola Benedetti (who has frequently been the U.K.'s highest-selling classical artist), will be returning as competition ambassador.
The list is divided by section (strings, keyboard, woodwind, brass and percussion). And among the less-often-spotlit instruments are harp (17-year-old Juliana Myslov), saxophone (two finalists, Jessika Gillam, 15, Nick Seymour, 17), recorder (Sophie Westbrooke, 15) and three trombonists (Ellena Newton, 14, Isobel Daws, 14 and Lewis Bettles, 18).
There will also, for the first time, be a jazz strand of the competition, to be decided at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on March 8.
Cardiff (where BBC Wales is based) will be the location for the classical category finals at the start of March. The final shoots across to Scotland's Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on May 18.
The most recent BBC Young Musician was the cellist Laura van der Heijden. Previous winners of the contest include Freddy Kempf, Natalie Clein and Jennifer Pike.
This year there were more than 450 entries.
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