The bright day is done Finghin Collins

• Cécile Chaminade (1857 - 1944): Aubade, Op. 140:
• 1Chaminade: Aubade, Op. 14001:57
• Amy Beach (1867 - 1944): A Hermit Thrush at Morn, Op. 92 No. 2:
• 2Beach: A Hermit Thrush at Morn, Op. 92 No. 204:49
• Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828): Die Schöne Müllerin, D. 795:
• 3Schubert: Die Schöne Müllerin, D. 795: VIII. Morgengruß (Arr. by Leopold Godowsky)04:14
• Gerald Barry (b. 1952): The Ros Tapestry Suite:
• 4Barry: The Ros Tapestry Suite: Midday07:52
• John Field (1782 - 1837): Midi:
• 5Field: Midi04:45
• Amy Beach: A Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op. 92 No. 1:
• 6Beach: A Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op. 92 No. 105:36
• Eric Sweeney (b. 1948): The Ros Tapestry Suite:
• 7Sweeney: The Ros Tapestry Suite: Evening – The Lighthouse at Hook Head05:24
• Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886): Transcendental Etudes, S. 139:
• 8Liszt: Transcendental Etudes, S. 139: XI. Harmonies du Soir09:46
• Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918): Estampes, L. 100:
• 9Debussy: Estampes, L. 100: II. Soirée dans Grenade04:58
• Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945): Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB 89:
• 10Bartók: Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB 89: IV. The Night’s Music04:59
• Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896): Soirées Musicales, Op. 6:
• 11Schumann: Soirées Musicales, Op. 6: II. Notturno04:57
• Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856): Fantasiestücke, Op. 12:
• 12Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 12: V. In der Nacht04:36
• Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849): Nocturne in F-Sharp Major, Op. 15 No. 2:
• 13Chopin: Nocturne in F-Sharp Major, Op. 15 No. 204:23
• Total Runtime01:08:16

Info for The bright day is done

“I’ve just listened to the entire recording of the Ros Tapestry Suite”, she said, “without looking at the booklet. And one of the pieces that stood out to me was “Midday” by Gerald Barry. I started thinking about creating a programme based around different times of the day.”

The speaker was Ciara Higgins, artistic director of the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival, it was late March 2021. Within a short space of time, we had put together a programme and in June 2021 I performed the recital online at Farmleigh House in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

From this recital came the idea for the present CD recording, with the programme more or less unchanged; the Liszt work was added afterwards.

The concepts of morning and evening, of night and day, of sleep and wakening, are ones that are universal to all humankind. I have long been fascinated by the cyclical nature of the day and night, and in particular I am in awe of the healing and restorative properties of sleep,

“Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care / The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath...”,

in the inimitable words of the Bard; and in fact the title of the disc also comes from Shakespeare, from his tragedy Antony and Cleopatra:

“Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, and we are for the dark.”

And so the idea of putting together a programme of solo piano works inspired by this theme appealed to me immediately. It allows for a programme of pieces which is diverse in its range of composers, periods and moods, and in which the pieces can be enjoyed individually or as a complete journey.

The choice of works is quite personal and is reflective of my own existing repertoire, as well as some works I chose to learn especially for the project. The programme does not seek to be in any way comprehensive – and indeed if one were to focus on night time alone, there would be enough nocturnal repertoire to stretch across many CDs. Repertoire focussed on earlier times of the day is more scant, but it was a joy to discover Cécile Chaminade’s simple and fresh Aubade or Dawn Song, guiding us gently into the light of the day.

We then hear the first of two pieces composed by Amy Beach at the MacDowell artists’ retreat in New Hampshire in 1921. Both pieces, A Hermit Thrush at Morn and A Hermit Thrush at Eve, showcase the eponymous North American bird whose song has been described as the finest sound in nature; certainly, Beach’s accurate and beautifully choreographed evocations do nothing to dispel this theory. Similarly gentle but tinged with sadness is Leopold Godowsky’s florid 1927 transcription for solo piano of Morning Greeting, the eighth song from Schubert’s song cycle Die schöne Müllerin / The Fair Maid of the Mill.

As we move towards the middle of day, pieces by two very different Irish composers are juxtaposed. Gerald Barry’s contribution to the Ros Tapestry Suite, to which he appended the title Midday, seeks to conjure the tense and expectant atmosphere on the south Wexford coast as the Irish people awaited the arrival of the Normans in 1169. The piece is made up of small musical gestures repeated again and again to hypnotic effect. This leads seamlessly into Midi by the doyen of Irish composers and inventor of the Nocturne, John Field, a lively and charming Rondo whose ending is crowned by the tolling of the twelve bells of midday.

We slip into the evening with Amy Beach’s second Hermit Thrush piece, which is followed by another piece from the Ros Tapestry Suite, Eric Sweeney’s evocation of the waves crashing into the ancient lighthouse at Hook Head on Ireland’s south-east coast and the nearby monks chanting Ubi Caritas. We then hear the most substantial piece on the programme, Franz Liszt’s Harmonies of the Evening, the eleventh of his Transcendental Etudes, whose atmospheric opening soon gives way to a predictably Lisztian dramatic climax before returning to its initial calm.

The listener is then transported to the sultry climes of Andalucia for Debussy’s Evening in Granada with its hypnotic habañera rhythms.

As night sets in we find ourselves in deepest Hungary. Béla Bartók conjures up a magical world of birds, frogs and insects in the Night's Music from his Out of Doors Suite, also managing to fit in a wedding song and a song of mourning. Clara Schumann’s Notturno, composed when she was just 17, is one of her most beautiful compositions, yearning and resigned. Her husband’s fantasy-piece In the Night, composed three years later, could not be more contrasting – turbulent, troubled and passionate, maybe suggesting a sleepless night. As an encore to calm us down and to soothe our souls, Chopin’s glorious F sharp major Nocturne – a piece that I have performed perhaps more than any other as an encore throughout my career – should hopefully hit the spot.

Finghin Collins, piano

Finghin Collins
One of Ireland's most successful musicians, Dubliner Finghin Collins was born in 1977 and studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with John O'Conor and at the Geneva Conservatoire with Dominique Merlet. Winner of the RTÉ Musician of the Future Competition in 1994 and the Classical Category at the National Entertainment Awards in Ireland in1998, he went on to achieve major international success by taking first prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland in 1999. Since then he has developed a flourishing international career that takes him all over Europe, the United States and the Far East.

Collins has performed with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, garnering consistent praise from critics and public alike. Conductors with whom he has collaborated include Frans Brüggen, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Hans Graf, Emmanuel Krivine, Nicholas McGegan, Gianandrea Noseda, Sakari Oramo, Tadaaki Otaka, Heinrich Schiff, Vassily Sinaisky, Leonard Slatkin and Gábor Tákacs-Nagy.

Performances across Europe have included such prestigious venues as Symphony Hall Birmingham, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Hall and Cadogan Hall, London, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam (both halls), Théâtre du Châtelet and Salle Cortot Paris, Salle Molière Lyon, Liederhalle Stuttgart, Auditorio Nacional Madrid, Palao de la Musica Valencia, Gulbenkian Hall Lisbon, Sala Verdi Milan, Teatro Manzoni Bologna, Konzerthaus Berlin, Konzerthaus Vienna, Franz Liszt Academy Budapest, Philharmonic Hall Warsaw and the Auditorium Stravinski Montreux. He has also performed at Carnegie Hall, New York and the Kennedy Center, Washington DC, as well as at both Ravinia and Gilmore Festivals in the USA. European Festival appearances include the Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron(France), Klavier-Festival Ruhr and Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival (Germany), Lockenhaus Festival (Austria), Delft International Chamber Music Festival and Storioni Festival (Holland), Chopin Festival (Poland), Musical Olympus Festival (Russia), Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad (Switzerland), as well as the Mostly Mozart Festival (UK).

Chamber music plays a significant role in his musical life and he has collaborated with London Winds and the Aviv, Callino, Chilingirian, ConTempo, Ebène, Goldner, Shanghai, Skampa, St Petersburg, Vanbrugh, Vertavo and Vogler String Quartets. Chamber music partners have included violinists Tasmin Little, Kristóf Bárati and Ilya Gringolts, cellists Han-Na Chang, Marc Coppey, István Várdai, clarinettists Sharon Kam, Romain Guyot and Carol McGonnell, sopranos Ailish Tynan and Lenneke Ruiten, tenor James Gilchrist and baritone Maarten Koningsberger, among many others.

In 2010 Finghin Collins gave his second critically-acclaimed performance at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In 2013 he completed his three-year tenure as Associate Artist of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, completing a cycle of the complete Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos and commissioning a new work for piano and orchestra by Deirdre Gribbin.

In 2016 Finghin made his debuts in Turkey, China and Australia as well as performing throughout Europe. In March 2017, he performs a recital as part of the National Concert Hall's International Concert Series to mark his 40th birthday. Other engagements include performances in Jersey, Switzerland, France, Ireland and the USA, where he will make his debut at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in August 2017, performing with counter-tenor David Daniels.

Over the past decade Collins has developed a close relationship with Claves Records in Switzerland, recording two double CDs of Schumann’s piano music (which won numerous awards including Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in 2006), and more recently recording a CD of works for piano and orchestra by Charles V. Stanford with the RTÉ NSO / Kenneth Montgomery (Editor's Choice, May 2011). In May 2013 RTÉ lyric fm launched his latest recording of four Mozart piano concertos directed from the keyboard with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. A new Chopin recital CD will be released in 2017, a co-production between RTÉ lyric fm and Claves Records.

Finghin Collins is very active as a programmer, commissioner and concert presenter in Ireland, having been Artistic Director of the New Ross Piano Festival since its inception in 2006, and Artistic Director of Music for Galway since 2013. In addition, he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Dublin International Piano Competition (2006 - 2015), a member of the Board of Directors of the National Concert Hall (2001 - 2006), Musician-in-Residence in South Dublin County Council (2005 - 2008) and Artist-in-Residence in Waterford Institute of Technology (2005 - 2009).

Booklet for The bright day is done