Twenty-five-year-old Orest Smovzh from Ukraine was positively beaming as he came off the platform. And if you ask him, he had several good reasons for doing so. In addition to his delight at the programme, which he says is very different from those he knows from other violin competitions, he is also mad about Denmark in general and Odense in particular, which he says has a special magic of its own.

- Denmark is a very special country for me. It has a unique kind of magic. It’s not the magic we usually say about Paris or Venice, but it’s something not too … not too big, but with some special kind of comfort inside. You can go around Odense and see these very little houses. They don’t look very fancy, but there’s some feeling of magic inside. Orest Smovzh tells us.

And he knows what he is talking about, because this is his second visit to the magical town of Odense as a contestant in the Carl Nielsen Violin Competition. Last time he made it to the second round.