REVIEWS
"The church has atmospheric charm, but a passer-by would be hard pressed to identify it as the venue for the finest piano festival in Ireland. In just four years, the New Ross Piano Festival has built such a reputation. It is a niche market, but the niche is getting bigger. Record attendances were reached again with beaming faces all round....
...The afternoon concert revealed the depth of talent that this festival offers, with superb contributions from artistic director Finghin Collins and the two Leeds International winners - Finland's Antti Siirala and Korea's Sunwook Kim. Collins, with lustrous backing from the Callino Quartet, excelled with the wonderfully romantic Piano Quintet by Frank Bridge..."
Dick O'Riordan, Sunday Business Post, October 11th 2009
"Now in its fourth season, the four-day New Ross Piano Festival, with Finghin Collins as artistic director, displays innovative planning both in content and artistic flexibility. This year's event, based in the acoustically excellent St Mary's Church, brings together a coterie of Collins's contemporaries, several of whom enjoy international reputations following prestigious competition awards....
...Finghin Collins's own contribution is substantial. Gracefully propelled, Beethoven's short 'Op 90 Sonata' moves with articulate clarity. Two of Liszt's operatic paraphrases -- Wagner's 'Isolde' 'Liebestod' and a potpourri of Verdi's 'Rigoletto' themes -- come in waves of pianistic virtuosity. Tolling bells permeate Schnittke's 'Piano Quintet, the intense Collins/Callino partnership conveying the Quintet's disturbing qualities with uncompromising candour."
Pat O'Kelly, Irish Independent, September 29th 2009
"The performance by the Quatuor Ebène and Finghin Collins gave full rein to the harmonious architecture and richness of inspiration of this music [Fauré's Second Piano Quintet] which combines youthfulness and serenity, two virtues normally opposed. What juvenile freshness in the opening of the first movement and in the impressive scherzo where a mad wind blows. What balance between this communicative joy and the purified depths of the prayer in the Andante!"
Jean-Jacques Scherrer, Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, September 14th 2009
"Collins plays Schumann in a refreshingly direct, unfussy manner, with a warm-hearted tone full of telling touches and refined rubato. Listen, for instance, to the way he subtly shapes the melody of the first of the "Three Little Pieces" of Bunte Blätter (the whole set is a joy, not least the concluding "Quick March") and sings his way over the energetic semiquaver accompaniment in the Intermezzo from Faschingsschwank aus Wien..."
Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone Magazine, September 2009
"In this version of the Etudes symphoniques (in which he incorporates the posthumous variations) he shows himself to be a very rare artist in that the fearsome technical difficulties are surmounted seemingly without effort, at the same time as the poetic nature of his interpretations place him in the highest class, alongside Perahia and Kempff. Where Collins scores so admirably is that his combination of those elements are placed wholly within a profound understanding of the underlying structural mastery of the studies - a demonstration of the Celto-Germanic revelation. At times, it would be hard to imagine more sensitive pianism (such as the posthumous Variation IV) or more controlled virtuosity (as in the succeeding Variation VI, Allegro molto) or more technical-expressive virtuosity (as in the ninth Etude). This is deeply impressive playing throughout."
Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review, June 2009
"The cello and piano duo of Marc Coppey and Finghin Collins dealt with its storms and caresses as to the manner born [Mendelssohn D major cello sonata]."
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, June 29th 2009
"Finghin Collins, gifted with playing of perfect loyalty, playing of a precision which affords grandeur and refinement in equal measure, playing of a natural simplicity which rejects effects without getting in the way of expression, possesses the means of his ambitions. Over and above this pianistic baggage, he demonstrates again, in the well-known pages of the Abegg Variations, the Etudes Symphoniques and the Faschingsschwank aus Wien, that he has everything of a great Schumannien, with all that that entails - imagination without excess, taste and sound-world."
Etienne Moreau, Diapason magazine, France, June 2009
"The Irish pianist Finghin Collins fulfilled his task [Strauss Burleske] with elegant nobility, scintillating fingerwork and clearly delineated passages."
Mannheimer Morgen, May 15th 2009
"The longer works - the Etudes Symphoniques (which includes the posthumous variations) and the Bunte Blätter - find Collins on top form, noble and touching, as do the Nachtstücke and the fully indulged carnivalesque contrasts of Faschingsschwank aus Wien."
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times, April 24th 2009
