{TABLE} Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue..................... Bach Sonata.......................................... Berg Sonata No 2 (1931 version).......................Rachmaninov Piano Pieces Op 119............................. Brahms Ballade No 4.................................... Chopin Isoldes Liebestod.............................. Liszt/Wagner Rigoletto Paraphrase............................ Liszt {/TABLE} FINGHIN Collins is at the younger end of the Irish entry for this year's Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition.
At 19 (he'll be 20 by the time of the competition itself), he has a string of successes in youth competitions behind him, and last September he made it to the semi-finals of the Leeds Competition, a major achievement for a player so young.
The technically demanding programme he offered at his Foley Bursary recital at the John Field Room last night reflected the generosity of his pianistic endowment.
The physical pleasure he took in negotiating the notes was a strong feature of his playing, from the machine-gun-burst runs of the Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, through the riotous profusion of Rachmaninov's tumultuous Second Sonata to the cascading arabesques of Liszt's Rigoletto Paraphrase.
Yielding to the pleasures of the hand, of course, by no means guarantees success in shaping the music according to its needs. It would have been a bit easier on the ear if the young player had more consistently managed to separate the individual strands in the patterns of the Rachmaninov.
When he did, as at the second movement's first dolce marking when the accompaniment runs into semi-quavers, the results could be captivating. Elsewhere there was a niggling feeling that the music needed to breathe a little, for some pockets of air to be found around the so, so many notes.
The quieter stretches of the Berg Sonata, for instance, and the delicate final section of Brahms's B minor Intermezzo suggest that Collins is finely equipped for handling pared down writing.
That he so rarely chooses to reach his listeners by, as it were, inviting them to lean a little closer than by setting off a firecracker or two, is perhaps at the moment the major factor which limits the extent of the musical hold this talented young player can exert.
