He's played to 5,000 at the Proms and is programming his own festival – pianist Finghin Collins is hitting the right key, writes MICHAEL DERVAN
IT'S A good year for Finghin Collins. At the beginning of September he made his second appearance at the BBC Proms in London, commemorating the Schumann bicentenary with a well-received performance of the composer's Introduction and Allegro Appassionatowith the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda.
He’s artistic director of the New Ross Piano Festival, a boutique festival that’s run successfully every September at St Michael’s Church in New Ross since 2006. And he’s the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever associate artist, and makes his first appearance in the new role in a late-night performance of Mozart’s Piano and Wind Quintet on October 15th.
Playing at the Proms, a mega-festival that runs for two months and plays to audiences of 6,000-plus in the Royal Albert Hall, is clearly a big thrill.
“This year,” he’s delighted to point out, “they had a five per cent increase in the audience. 313,000 people went to the Proms this year. It’s fabulous. It’s like nothing else, playing in the Proms. I’m usually excited when performing anyway, because it’s exciting to perform. But at the Proms, you have all these people standing, looking at you with beady eyes and willing you on to play. There’s an incredible feeling of being surrounded.”
The Albert Hall may be huge, but there’s no sense for the performer of the sound running away from the stage. “That’s quite disconcerting in certain venues. But in the Albert Hall, funnily enough, it doesn’t feel like that. I remember the first time I walked on stage, it doesn’t feel that big. Because it’s built in a circle, it’s not all down there, it’s all around you. And the sound doesn’t go away, it does come back. It’s very comfortable to play in. The piano was very responsive. It was a fabulous experience.”
The New Ross Piano Festival came about serendipitously.
Collins bought a house on the River Barrow, not far from the town. The local association, Music for New Ross, was thinking about cost efficiency in relation to piano recitals. Hiring a concert grand is a big expense, so why not do more than a single recital when the piano’s in town? And when everything was brought together, a weekend festival was the outcome. And the principle behind the shape of the festival has been to keep it simple. He invites a number of guest pianists, but doesn’t give them solo recitals. All of the players appear in all of the concerts, so that someone who can only get to one concert can hear all of the pianists. The festival also provides solo recital slots for younger players, both Irish and international, and string players are included – often a string quartet – to open up the chamber music repertoire.
“I try to get a mix of pianists who will be well-known to Irish audiences, and others who haven’t been here at all, or very rarely.”
Collins gushes about the qualities of the New Ross venue. “St Michael’s Church is built into the ruin of a 12th-century abbey which was built by the Normans. It’s got a lovely, lovely acoustic. It’s very clear. There’s a great space where you can put a stage in, there’s nothing in the way. It’s a good size for what we want – we’ve never had to turn people away and we’ve always had very good audiences. It’s got a great atmosphere.
The main thrust of his new relationship with the RTÉ NSO will be the performance of all of Mozart’s piano concertos, “many of them, but not all, directed from the keyboard. I think it’s the first time this orchestra will have done all the concertos with the same pianist.”
Collins sees the project as “a personal journey for me. I see these concerts very much as chamber music on a large scale. When I’m directing from the keyboard, the musicians will have to listen even more than they usually do. They won’t be able to look up at all times and see a beat. We’ll be making music together, and I want to see that in the rehearsals. I want people to be able to talk and discuss and see it not so much as me giving them my opinions and saying I want this and I want that. I want it as a two-way process.”
Directing from the keyboard often leads to conducting full and proper. And Collins did once have ambitions in that direction. "I took lessons. I went to Jorma Panula's course in Finland. I took lessons from Alexander Anissimov and Gerhard Markson. I got bits of experience. I remember conducting Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faunea couple of times, not without success. I conducted a whole programme in Belgrade, the Debussy, a Mozart concerto, and Dvorak's New Worldsymphony. I was very proud of that. They had no money, and wanted me to do a concerto. So I said, I'll do it if you let me conduct the whole concert. And they did. But I have no plans to become a Mahler, Bruckner or Beethoven symphony conductor."
His explanation is simple, “It’s just I don’t feel it’s me,” adding that he’s happy to “do one thing and do it properly”. And then he remembers that he will be conducting a concert with the NSO, but he downplays it, as the programme is of Mozart concert arias, rather than anything big-scale.
COLLINS GIVES THE impression of being clear, confident, uncomplicated. Winning the Clara Haskil Competition in Geneva in 1999 was a great career boost. “It changed my life, changed my career.” It opened doors, introduced him to Claves Records, and got him engagements with orchestras that mightn’t have considered him before.
An equally big confidence booster, he says, was the Leeds Competition, where he got to the semi-finals. At that time “I had no idea where I fitted in in the international scheme of things.” Leeds showed him that, at the age of 19, he could hack it with the best of them in the harsh world of music competitions.
In part at least, his confidence seems to stem from a deep-seated pragmatism. He says he side-steps conflicts with conductors and colleagues. “I’m a very reasonable person, happy to have suggestions thrown at me. I’ll try anything once. I’ll give it a go.” He’s even happy, he says, to risk the exposure of experimenting with other people’s ideas in concert.
He understands that a career is about a lot more than music.
“You have to be a good communicator, you have to be a good businessman, you have to reply to e-mails. You have to be pleasant to deal with, or promoters won’t have you back. You don’t chop and change a programme, you don’t do things that annoy promoters. It’s common sense, but a lot of musicians aren’t aware of it.
“You’ve got to be an organised person. Playing the piano is only one aspect of it. Even though one might have an agent, one is always one’s own agent, at all times. People are making their impression of me, not only as a musician, but as a person, as a human being. You’ve got to be politically minded, basically, and not bite the hand that feeds you.”
The New Ross Piano Festival runs from Friday, September 24 to Sunday 26. Finghin Collins’s début as associate artist of the RTÉ NSO is at 10pm on Friday, October 15, at the National Concert Hall
Best and worst
Favourite cityParis, Prague or New York. I think Paris is my favourite city in the world. It stuns me with its beauty every time I'm there.
Most played on my iPodMozart's Così fan tutte, in a recording conducted by Karl Böhm
Favourite place to performThe Wigmore Hall in London. It's just such a wonderful place to play
Dream holidayGreece is my holiday destination of choice – beaches, ancient ruins, food, sea, sand, island hopping.
Worst nightmareHaving prepared the wrong concerto, or turning up at the wrong place on the wrong day, or leaving my mobile phone on when I'm performing – it happened, but it didn't go off.
