FORT WORTH - I’m at the Cliburn piano competition as part of a group from the Music Critics Association of North America. The competition’s organizers are taking wonderful care of us, with a nice press office across the street from Bass Hall, equipped with everything from bottled water and a great spread of fruit, cookies and cheeses to computers. The finalists are all excellent in their individual ways, and we’ve had terrific access to the people we need.

Still, it’s a lot in a short time; we had Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night concerts, two on Saturday, along with morning symposia, catch-as-catch-can  writing and filing, and not a lot of sleep.

So Paul Horsley, formerly of the Kansas City Star, now of the Kansas City Independent, spoke for many of us when he said, partway through the Saturday matinee: “This is the point in the competition where you start to ask, ‘Are we there yet?’”