NCH, Dublin

Mozart – Sonata in D K448. Lutoslawski – Paganini Variations. Milhaud – Scaramouche. Brahms – Sonata in F minor Op 34.

YOU CAN do a lot with two pianos that you can’t do with one but it’s a particularly challenging medium for performers, requiring, as it were, extra hardware to prepare and perform.

The pianos’ sharpness of attack is cruel in exposing weaknesses in ensemble.

Perhaps as a result, the top rank of piano duo teams includes a high proportion of siblings and married couples.

There is an especial connection, too, between the two pianists who appeared at the National Concert Hall on Thursday. John O’Conor teamed up with former pupil Finghin Collins for a two-piano evening promoted by the Dublin International Piano Competition.

The programme consisted of four staples of the two-piano repertoire. The evening opened with the Sonata in D by Mozart, a work remarkable for its magical quicksilver interplay, and concluded with the Sonata in F minor by Brahms, an earlier incarnation of the composer’s stormily thrusting Piano Quintet.

In between, O’Conor and Collins offered two frolicking works from the first half of the 20th century, Lutoslawski’s Paganini Variations and Milhaud’s Scaramouche.

Some of the best playing came in the liquid exchanges in the Mozart, moments that worked like sleight of hand.

There were also passages though where the sound became just too voluminous for the style of the music, with the two players each going their own way somewhat soloistically rather than adapting as a well-balanced duo.

The issues of balance came to a head in the Brahms, where the necessary power was often achieved at the expense of clarity, and the finale was at times almost riotously muddy.

In contrast, the over-the-top moments in the Lutoslawski and Milhaud seemed fully in keeping with the frisky wit which makes both works so attractive.