After three days and 40 singers, Round 1 has ended – 20 go home, 20 stay. I must admit I was expecting tear-stained/hungover fellow breakfasters this morning as I’m in the same hotel as the contestants, but they’re clearly prepared and stoic! As I type, a rather stylish solo line from Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations is filtering through the wall - I’m obviously next to a good player as the cello category is one step ahead of the vocal and he/she has made the next round here in St Petersburg.

The vocal contestants have been a varied bunch - all impressive and all, almost without exception, from Russia, ex-USSR countries, South Korea and China. Mongolia must be a musical nation as quite a few hailed from that far-flung corner of the Russian Federation. 

The first round required each singer to present three pieces; Round 2 cranks the level up a notch and a folksong and ‘modern’ opera aria and now stirred into the mix. (What, I wondered, would an English singer offer in this day and age - would a youngster know even a single folksong from our neck of the woods? I doubt it!).

We’re based in Mariinsky 2 and, from our eyrie, have a perfect view of the corridor where the contestants and jurors file in and out - and it means we can grab them for a quick chat on camera. And that’s been one of the highlights of the Competition so far. Deborah Voigt shared her thoughts about what makes a winner, that operatic polymath John Fisher was infectiously up-beat about the world of singers and singing, and Chen-Ye Yuan, a former winner, talked about how they immediately knew the 10 per cent who would just slip effortlessly into the next round.

And yesterday, Pinchas Zukerman was in town for a couple of concerts - the Beethoven concerto with Gergiev, and Mozart and Brahms where he would both play and conduct. So we grabbed him for chat (you can catch it at medici.tv). Before we went on air, I had to ask him about that heavenly recording of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending that he recorded in the 1970s for DG with the English Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim. A few years ago, Daniel Hope described it to me as one of the loveliest examples of violin-playing and that it’d had all been done with virtually no preparation. So, with Zukerman right there, I asked the question! ‘Absolutely,’ was his answer. ‘I was staying at the Westbury hotel, Barenboim rang up and asked me to do it. “But I don’t even know the piece!” ‘Schott’s are sending a copy round.’ So Zukerman got the music, read it through, looked at it again on his way to the sessions in Wembley - and then recorded it! And it is indeed gorgeous, ethereal and full of magic! 

Today’s a day off, both for the judges who probably need a break from Songs to the Moon and Portrait Arias, and for the contestants, who need to work on their folksongs and Stravinsky arias! (Actually a few have chosen Bernstein numbers, which should be fun). And I’m off to a private viewing of a new exhibition of the architect Zaha Hadid’s work at the Hermitage…and also tracking down a classical record store: Rob Cowan’s after a disc of Andrei Ivanov!