NCH, Dublin

Mozart – Piano Concertos No 6 in B flat K238; No 19 in F K459; Concerto for two pianos.

The penultimate concert in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s current season was a rare offering of three concertos, part of the Finghin Collins’s ongoing survey of Mozart’s piano concertos. And it was an evening designed to climax after the interval, when Collins was joined by French pianist Cédric Tiberghien for a performance of the composer’s Concerto in E flat for two pianos.

This work, written in 1779 or 1780, is one where Mozart seems to have taken particular delight in the imitative games, the patterns of hide and seek, and the enriched textures that having more than one solo instrument made possible. It seems an awful pity that, around the time he composed it, he abandoned projects to write a concerto for violin and piano and a sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and cello.

Paradoxical as it may seem, it’s a concerto that sounds best when the two soloists each have clear identities rather than sounding identical. On Friday, Tiberghien, playing the first piano part, sounded a little brighter in tone and that bit more clearly sculpted in articulation than the rounder-toned Collins. So, with musical intentions that were closely aligned and co-ordination that was tight, the two players played off each other in a way that added to the pleasurable complexity of the experience.

On his own, in an earlier and a later concerto, Collins played the faster movements with a sometimes puppyish friskiness, and the slow movements with a kind of wistful grace, though not all of his embellishments of the melodic line seem quite on target in terms of Mozartean style. However, in his direction of the orchestra from the keyboard, he secured responses of an agreeable clarity.