It’s been a pretty intensive week here in St Petersburg - we’ve watched 40 20-minute programmes followed by 20 30-minutes ones. Even the jury is looking tired! But now, after Round 2, the shortlist is down to just eight singers - four men and four women.

Inevitably given the status the Tchaikovsky Competition enjoys in the piano and violin worlds, the focus – and most of the debate on social media – has tended to be directed at the piano category. (The piano, violin and cello contests are now in their final stage with six concertos on each instrument being performed over three nights - two more nights to go.)

The vocalists have a less time-consuming final round to contend with - just one long concert tomorrow night. Each singer will have to offer an aria from a Tchaikovsky opera or oratorio and an aria of their own choosing. The programme may be shorter but the challenge is considerably greater – the hall in which they will perform is huge and having an orchestra as partners (even such a vocally-aware one as the Mariinsky orchestra) will present its own demands.

Of the eight singers (and I must say I’m disappointed that the mezzo I enjoyed has fallen at the last fence) are a talented lot and despite the dominance of Russia at Round 2 (13 of the 20 singers hailed from within its borders), the national spread has found its own level with four Russians, one Armenian, one Chinese, one Mongolian and one South Korean having survived last night’s jury vote.

One of the five works the singers had to offer at Round 2 was an aria from a work 'composed after 1950' – and while we had a number of Soviet works, quite a few looked West (or maybe from here it’s East) to the US and gave us arias from Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe. (Antonina Vesenina, who made it through to the finals, gave us Cunegonde’s ‘Glitter and be Gay’ in impeccable English and with buckets of character.) I’m not sure any of these ‘modern’ works really demonstrated anything that the Romantic opera arias didn’t because most of the pieces were written in an obviously ‘retro’ language - and Cunegonde’s aria is surely a send-up of a bel canto showpiece anyway! Hangsung Yoo’s choice of part of Britten’s Billy Budd may well have propelled him into the final round.

I have a much-needed day off today – these have been long days with enormous gaps that required filling – and envisage an afternoon of being a St Petersburg flâneur as the Hermitage is, sadly, closed on a Monday.

You can catch all the contestants’ performances at medici.tv - check out Anastasia Fyodorova (my favourite, the one who has left the contest) and Yulia Matochkina among the women and Chianyue Wang and Aiunbaatar Ganbaatar among the men, they had plenty of personality. And the entire Tchaikovsky Competition 2015 - all four categories – is available to watch live, or ‘catch-up' on medici.tv (and tens of thousands of people clearly are!).