Finghin Collins – The bright day is done (2022) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Finghin Collins - The bright day is done (2022) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz] Download

“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.

Tracklist:

1-01. Finghin Collins – Aubade, Op. 140 (01:57)
1-02. Finghin Collins – A Hermit Thrush at Morn, Op. 92 No. 2 (04:49)
1-03. Finghin Collins – Die Schöne Müllerin, D. 795: VIII. Morgengruß (Arr. by Leopold Godowsky) (04:14)
1-04. Finghin Collins – The Ros Tapestry Suite: Midday (07:52)
1-05. Finghin Collins – Midi (04:45)
1-06. Finghin Collins – A Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op. 92 No. 1 (05:36)
1-07. Finghin Collins – The Ros Tapestry Suite: Evening – The Lighthouse at Hook Head (05:24)
1-08. Finghin Collins – Transcendental Etudes, S. 139: XI. Harmonies du Soir (09:46)
1-09. Finghin Collins – Estampes, L. 100: II. Soirée dans Grenade (04:58)
1-10. Finghin Collins – Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB 89: IV. The Night’s Music (04:59)
1-11. Finghin Collins – Soirées Musicales, Op. 6: II. Notturno (04:57)
1-12. Finghin Collins – Fantasiestücke, Op. 12: V. In der Nacht (04:36)
1-13. Finghin Collins – Nocturne in F-Sharp Major, Op. 15 No. 2 (04:23)

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