Out in the provinces

Yesterday was a blogless day because I wasn’t in the competition office. But: yesterday the competition scattered all over Finland, the office was dismantled and packed into boxes (you’d never believe it but we needed only a few boxes!) and the boxes were finally carted downstairs, where there’s now a new competition corner for contestants in Helsinki. It’s a sort of base, because it’s nice for the contestants to have somewhere to go while we secretaries are out in the provinces.

Today I arrived in Jyväskylä and met up again with the four semi-finalists playing with the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä. They themselves had arrived here yesterday and have already had full rehearsals with the orchestra today. These were held in the orchestra’s rehearsal room which, and this is interesting, is above a sort of shopping centre. It was nice hearing the muted strains of a Shostakovich cello concerto as I went up the steps to the rehearsal room – an absurd feeling in a shopping centre.

I’ve already checked out the Jyväskylä Theatre where the orchestra’s concerts are held. Designed by Aalto, it has a familiar Finlandia Hall feel to it.

The work of a competition secretary is right now that of a tour leader. Very quiet! The competitors are now concentrating solely on their performances and we’ve all dispersed to our hotel rooms. I’m thinking of the “Kuopio” contestants, right now all hard at work. Tomorrow evening they’ll be on stage too. In between handling the competition affairs of others I’m “on call” for when I’m needed. Somewhere in this hotel someone is playing the cello … No more for now.