After-piece No 1 - Raymond Deane
Rahu's Rounds - Raymond Deane
Prelude in C sharp minor Op 45 - Chopin
Waltzes Op 64 Nos 1 & 2 - Chopin
Ballade No 4 - Chopin
Sonata in B minor - Liszt
Hugh Tinney's piano recital at the National Concert Hall on Thursday was a fund-raiser for the Mabel Swainson Award at the Siemens Feis Ceoil, an annual award which gives the platform of a public recital in Dublin - with fee - to a pianist aged between 17 and 25.
When I first heard Hugh Tinney play, he wouldn't have been eligible for the award - he was too young - but he was already displaying what seemed like a deep native affinity for the music of Chopin.
The ease and naturalness of his Chopin has fluctuated over the years, diminishing for a while after he started studying abroad, before returning towards its original state - part of the maturing process involving the assertion of conscious control, I suspect.
Thursday's Chopin performances were surprising in a number of ways, more clinical than might have been expected, and yet not always well controlled in musical detail. For instance, Tinney at his best (or in his youth) would never have missed the musical and psychological significance of the magical pivot from minor key into major in the C sharp minor Waltz from Op 64.
Liszt's B minor Sonata was rather more successfully delineated in broad outlines and, although the playing was not without its moments of over-the-top striving (and a strangely disturbing major loss of memory or concentration towards the end), Tinney generally managed to deliver effectively on the promise of his build-ups.
Unusually, the newest music, two pieces by Raymond Deane, was placed first in the programme. This was a pity, since, for devilish elan and sheer exhilaration, the Ligeti-flavoured After-piece No 1 and the more conventionally virtuosic Rahu's Rounds easily surpassed anything that came in their wake. They served to show what a rewarding player Hugh Tinney is when firing on all cylinders.
