Symphony No 3 - Schubert
Piano Concerto in B flat K595 - Mozart
Symphony No 6 - Schubert
Pianist Barry Douglas, following his new secondary calling as conductor, was on the podium for the second of the Orchestra of St Cecilia's Bryden Thomson Memorial Concerts at the National Concert Hall on Wednesday. He is a dynamic presence in front of an orchestra, stabbing the air and thrusting at his players in a way that's not often fully reflected in the music. And that's no bad thing. For if the players were to follow the detail of what he sometimes outlines, the musical journey might be far too spiky for comfort.
On Wednesday, he was, however, highly successful in energising the music-making. The results were a bit too rough, perhaps, in Schubert's Third Symphony before the interval. But the Sixth, which closed the concert, had altogether suaver surfaces, and gave the impression of holding a much stronger place in the conductor's affections.
Finghin Collins's handling of Mozart's final piano concerto showed a new balance of ends and means in his playing. Mozart is genuinely one of those composers where less can be more, where normally successful means of expressive intensification can easily turn out to be counterproductive.
Collins has taken on board the fact that one of the most rewarding approaches to Mozart works at the micro-level. His new understanding was revealed in the finely-controlled, gentle tilts of the phrasing, the careful avoidance of the obvious in highlighting elements of formal design, and the mostly judicious embellishments added to the slow movement.
The long-familiar keyboard ease and finger fluency have taken on an added subtlety, the tone has lost some of its brighter edges in favour of a warmer internal glow.
And yet his slightly driven eagerness has been tamed rather than dispensed with, so the performance remained finely balanced between energy and reflection.
The somewhat coltish player of yore peeped out only in the cadenzas and decorated fermatas, where the extra flash seemed quite in place.
In short, with Douglas and the players of the OSC with him all the way, this was the finest performance I've yet heard from Ireland's most successful young pianist.
