The Marriage of Figaro Overture - Mozart
Piano Concerto No 1 - Brahms
Symphony No 4 - Brahms
The early and late stages of musicians' careers were celebrated in Friday night's concert at the National Concert Hall. Brahms was 25 when he completed his Piano Concerto No. 1 and played in the first performance. Finghin Collins is three years younger, and his participation in this concert was in recognition of his winning the Brennan Prize for the highest-placed Irish competitor in the 1997 Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition.
The concert closed with a warm tribute from the NSO's leader, Alan Smale, to mark the forthcoming retirement of the orchestra's longest-serving member, violinist Elias Maguire. It seemed appropriate that this should follow Brahms's Symphony No. 4 - one of the composer's last orchestral compositions.
Finghin Collins's certainty in technique and interpretation allowed one to relish this concerto's light and shade, as well as its leonine energy. His inclination always to project the top line was sometimes obtrusive. In the slow movement, for example, the orchestra's even-textured phrases do not ask for a tune-and-accompaniment response. Nevertheless, this was an assured, intelligent and enjoyable performance from soloist and conductor, with the NSO alert and sympathetic.
Sustaining phrases is one of the main challenges in the first movement of Brahms's Symphony No. 4, so the steady speed adopted by conductor Alexander Anissimov was ambitious. The NSO responded well, and played with the commitment this music deserves.
However, the performance was carried as much by that commitment as by finesse. It was at that edge of quality which made blemishes show.