chumann famously identified two alter-egos - Florestan and Eusebius

Schumann famously identified two alter-egos, Florestan and Eusebius, the first as impetuous as the second was reflective. Finghin Collins’s new contribution to Swiss label Claves’s complete survey of the composer’s piano music opens with a sometimes surprisingly cushioned approach to the showy Abegg Variations, with Eusebian lingerings countering the virtuoso rush. And there’s an amount of over-insistence in the otherwise fine account of the rarely heard Op 4 Intermezzi. The longer works – the Études symphoniques (which includes the posthumous variations) and the Bunte Blätter – find Collins on top form, noble and touching, as do the Nachstücke and the fully indulged carnivalesque contrasts of Faschingsschwank aus Wien. www.claves.ch