Two of the most popular pieces of orchestral music – Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik – are connected to the cycles of time. They are but the peak of a mountain of works relating to dawn, sunset, morning and evening stars, twilight, serenades, night music, and lots else to do with times of the day or seasons.
Finghin Collins’s new album is a personal selection of 13 piano pieces, opening with Cécile Chaminade’s short Aubade (rather too stiff in this performance), and embracing Amy Beach’s attractive pair of pieces featuring the morning and evening song of the hermit thrush, both communicated through atmospheric performances.
Not everything is quite as successful. There’s a lack of fluidity in Leopold Godowsky’s arrangement of Schubert’s song Morgengruß and the climaxes in Liszt’s Harmonies du Soir sound overblown.
The two pieces from The Ros Tapestry Suite that Collins commissioned for the New Ross Piano Festival – Gerald Barry’s Midday and Eric Sweeney’s Evening – both work well.
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The spare Barry could as well represent listlessness in heavy midday sun as its tapestry connection, the Wexford populace awaiting the arrival of the Normans. Afternoon gets skipped over and, predictably perhaps, night gets the most attention, with the Notturno from Clara Schumann’s Notturno standing out.
