Young performer climbs the peak

{TABLE} Quartet in G op 18 No 2 ............ Beethoven Sonata in C Minor Op ............... Beethoven Clarinet Quintet in A K581 ......... Mozart {/TABLE} Listening to the morning freshness of Beethoven's Quartet in G as played by the Vogler Quartet in the NCH last night, one forgot that this was any particular interpretation for nothing seems to come between the music and the ear.

Those elegant exchanges in the first movement, those exquisitely placed chords that punctuated the adagio, the sheer panache of the last two movements never lost that sense of surprise that the composer brought to his material.

Finghin Collins, semi finalist in the Leeds International Piano competition, 1996, mastered the whirlwinds of notes in the first movement of Beethoven's Op Ill with impressive results, but it was not possible to forget that this was an individual interpretation. The sense of a young performer matching himself against one of the peaks of music was palpable. The excitement of the struggle was conveyed and also the sense of triumph, but it was more the performer's triumph than the composer's. The heart stopping calm of the opening of the second movement was missed - a matter of pace and dynamics - but when the music livened up the player's hand became surer and the extraordinary theories of variations marked by lengthy trills so that this interpreter too could vanish into the music, at least some of the time.

It has always been a pleasure to hear Michael Collins play Mozart's clarinet quintet, and never more so than on this occasion when he played a basset clarinet, the instrument for which the work was written. Nearly twice the size of an ordinary clarinet it - extends the range into the bass and gives a remarkable richness and strength to the work as a whole. Any suggestion of excess sweetness was replaced bye an earthy vigour.

The Vogler Quartet were at one with Michael Collins and made the return to Mozart's original conception a wonderful experience.