Hybrid model: Postcard from Trondheim

I am in Trondheim in November 2021 – around 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle and it’s milder than I had feared – on the evening before the finals of the 21st Princess Astrid International Music Competition for violin. It should all have happened in 2020, but like the Olympic Games it was overtaken by events.

A few hours earlier, I was wondering if I would be here at all, as I sat at Oslo Airport, stranded in transit, with the ‘wrong kind of Covid pass’ and trying to download an app, with a plane to catch and the prospect of quarantine if I failed. The trials of international travel would have affected most of the people involved in the competition, but they all got there, and so did I. After that, Trondheim was great fun.

The finals were the first physical manifestation of the competition. All the previous rounds were online, with violinists in different countries playing for jurors in other different countries – and the public concerts which went with the semi-finals were cancelled. Despite the unusual circumstances, there were 180 applicants, some held over from last year, who had been whittled down to nine via pre-selection videos to take part in the semi-finals. For these they played a Beethoven sonata, a virtuoso solo piece and a new work by young Norwegian composer Victoria Seline Stokland, Glassberget (‘The Glass Mountain’)…