This post is not live anymore – click here for the 2nd part of today’s rehearsal blogging (Denmark, Albania, Romania, Georgia).

And that’s all for what I keep wanting to call the “morning” session of rehearsals, even though it’s already mid-afternoon! There’s a lunch break of just over an hour now, before we resume proceedings with Denmark. Stay tuned for more…

RUSSIA
The first rehearsals are all about relatives, not absolutes. For some countries, the question is “Could this be a potential qualifier?” For others, qualification is already taken for granted, and we’re instead asking: “Could this win the whole contest?”

Enter Russia and Polina Gagarina. Comfortably one of the most assured singers in the 2015 contest, all we really wanted to know was whether there would be gimmicks and tricks in the Russian staging this year, or whether they’d stage it more conventionally. And the answer is the latter. If my first response to “A Million Voices” was that it’s basically a Carrie Underwood power ballad, the stage presentation fits that impression perfectly, with Polina in a simple white dress surrounded by three backing singers, a guitarist and a hairy-arsed drummer (also in white).

It starts with “Undo”-style white lighting from above on a blue background, and it ends with a huge globe on the video backdrop. (There’s lots of world maps in the visual imagery this year, actually, with Armenia and Hungary also using the same idea.) In between, Polina commands the cameras well, though she occasionally exhibits Severina-style crazy/lazy eyes. There’s a clap-along moment before the final chorus and, oh, look, why am I even trying to describe this any more? It is very, very good. Dangerously good. It’s overtaken Estonia as the bookmakers’ favourite to win the first semi-final even while I’ve been writing this, and it deserves that position. Geopolitics and other factors may ultimately stop it from taking the overall ESC title, but right now, the first semi is its oyster.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

BELARUS
It’s just Uzari and Maimuna on stage for Belarus, with some (currently slightly tuneless) backing singers hidden off-stage somewhere. No dancers or other distractions, which actually leaves the stage a little bit empty. They’re trying to counteract this with lots of different ideas on the video wall: a red electrocardiogram line with a heart motif, some flashes of white that are presumably meant to make you think of lightning (but actually look more like toilet paper), explosions and blue-white clouds of virtual smoke, it’s all in there. And mostly quite effective, it has to be said.

Other than that it’s quite a conventional performance, with Uzari looking a bit like Guy Sebastian after a mild electric shock. He has a strangely effective visual charm, though he pulls some odd facial expressions too. Maimuna doesn’t look thrilled to be here (maybe someone told her she’d be allowed to play her violin live?), but there are lots of camera shots of her anyway – perhaps trying to attract jury votes, since there’s an accepted wisdom that Juries Like Proper Instruments.

No major vocal problems here, other than the aforementioned backing vocalists being a bit intrusive in places, plus Uzari holds a long note halfway through the second verse that ends up sounding a bit gargled and throaty. (I realise that’s micro-blogging of the highest order, but the camera focuses on him every time he does it, so they obviously think it’s a good thing. It isn’t.)

Oh! Maimuma just smiled! And suddenly Belarus are one step closer to qualification. How much closer they get, I don’t want to judge until the next run-throughs on Friday.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

HUNGARY
My compliments to the producers for a fantastic piece of running order arrangement here – Serbia into Hungary could barely be a bigger contrast, and it might well benefit both songs in terms of their qualification chances!

Anyway, even if Serbia was more press centre-friendly, Hungary feels like our first “proper” song of the day. Boggie and her backing group always seem to be in good voice, and that’s very much true here. Sober clothes, as expected, including an elegant maroon dress for the lead singer. With such a simple and repetitive song, though, what really matters is the staging, and that’s where I think they’ve got this right. Dim spotlights and low camera sweeps reveal each additional singer in turn, while the video backdrop is a carefully choreographed progression in which a monochrome “DNA strand” pattern of machine-guns gradually resolves itself into the shape of a tree, before turning into a full-colour actual tree on a green hillside for the last part of the song. It works really well on the scale of the Vienna stage, for all it’s hard to describe in words – the nearest comparison I can think of is the “Earthrise” behind Paradise Oskar in 2011.

This is quite unlike anything else in the first semi-final, which makes it a hard one to predict, but all I can say is Hungary is getting the absolute most of out its entry even at this early stage.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

SERBIA
What a way to start the day! Bojana appears on screen with huge frizzy hair, in which is buried something that might be a tiara or just a glittery ruffle. She’s wearing a big grey/silver tent with mirrored sequin attachments and is backed by four flag-waving backing singers/dancers who start proceedings in white masks and grey/silver capes. The stage is a fairly generic blue and black with white lighting.

Bojana herself delivers the song in a fairly straightforward (and vocally powerful) manner, with the backings doing the hard work – there’s some awkward steps, flag-waving, a bit of hand-dancing, and then they fling off their grey/silver capes when the tempo change happens to reveal the outfits beneath. Orange, pink and black are the key colours for the girls (or at least the ones that remain burned into the mind). We assume the guys aren’t wearing their final outfits for the post-cape-fling section yet, since one of them looks like David Cameron on a “ditch the suit jacket so you seem like a normal person” day, but maybe that’s part of the concept too.

The press centre goes wild with a mixture of enthusiasm and laughter. It’s hard to judge how many people think this is enjoyable trash and how many think it actually looks good. Based on the continued applause for the second run-through, I’m worried there’s quite a lot of the latter.

I don’t know, it’s a funny one, this. They look ridiculous, and the staging manages to be too busy and too static simultaneously, but the vocals are basically spot-on. (Bojana herself is by far the best thing about this entry, basically.) If yesterday’s rehearsals had been dull and sober, I might think there was an audience for something a bit crazy and bizarre like this, but as it stands, it risks being just another bit of weird styling and staging in a semi that’s already overflowing with that kind of thing.

image copyright: Andres Putting (EBU)

Introduction
Morning everybody! It’s another beautiful sunny day here in Vienna, so naturally we’re going to be spending it locked up in a press centre blogging today’s first rehearsals for you. We start at 12:00 CET with Serbia (although, like yesterday, we don’t expect to necessarily have perfect sound and vision on our screens right away), and this post will also cover the rehearsals from Hungary, Belarus and Russia – so stay tuned!