What Marta has been up to

So far on this blog, there has been a lot of Marta writing about what I have been doing. Today I am taking over the keyboard to let you know what Marta herself has been up to. While my life these days is a pretty predictable sequence of practicing and playing (and sometimes getting dressed up and posing for pictures), Marta gets to do a much more interesting variety of things with her time.

For one, she is our faithful blog updater. She heroically fights with the unreliable internet in our hotel and gets news posted as fast as possible.

With the same level of devotion, she has been listening to everybody at the competition and keeping detailed notes on their playing. (That is in fact where she is now.) Practicing to be a jury member herself one day, she has come up with a complex system of scoring, in which individual scores for each piece and for musicality, technique, and stage presence are averaged together. Armed with this scoring system, she accurately predicted the results of first stage before they were announced. This makes her an invaluable resource for me – not having the time or emotional energy myself to go listen to everybody – to know what is going on. After each session of listening, she filters her comments for me and reports back with relevant advice such as, "We haven’t been able to hear the last note of anyone’s Hindemith because the hall swallows it up. Make sure you play it out!"

Marta is also my official fashion consultant. Back in Paris, she helped me plan out my wardrobe for each stage – matching jewelry and all. Here she is in our hotel room altering my first-stage dress! She actually took in a whole seam in back because it was too baggy. This involved scary things like cutting the fabric, but it all came out perfectly.

On the side, she has been knitting a Learn-to-Knit Afghan, which will be a patchwork blanket of 64 knitted squares, each of a different pattern. The idea is that once you have done all the squares, you will be well-versed in all the different patterns and ready to conquer things like sweaters. She is just starting the 12th square. Even this turned out to be useful to the harp competition, since I have been taking one square out with me on stage each time that I perform, to wipe my hands in case they feel sweaty.

In many little ways, Marta has kept me sane and focused, by taking care of all the little errands and chores that pop up. On our first day here, she unpacked both our suitcases and arranged the room. Yesterday, having been here a week and getting low on clean underwear, she laboriously washed all our laundry in the sink and hung it out to dry. Honestly, if you are planning to do an international harp competition, I strongly advise taking a marta along with you, because I can’t imagine how it would be possible any other way.