Biography
"Of Finghin Collins as soloist, little needs to be said that has not been said before: he is exceptionally fluent, exceptionally intelligent, exceptionally sensitive, responding to every possible nuance that Stanford prescribes."
Piers Burton-Page, International Record Review
Born in Dublin in 1977, Finghin Collins began his musical studies at the age of three with his sister Mary. He continued his training from the age of six at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin in John O'Conor's class, until 1999, when he graduated. He then undertook three years of virtuosity studies with Dominique Merlet at the Geneva Conservatory of Music and in 2002 won first prize with distinction as well as the Georges Filipinetti Prize. After winning Ireland's most prestigious awards, Finghin Collins enjoyed international success; in September 1999, he was the winner of the Clara Haskil Competition in Vevey, Switzerland.
From then on, he enjoyed a series of prestigious engagements with some of the world's greatest orchestras: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the SWR Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest, and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, among others. He has been invited to perform with renowned conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Sakari Oramo, Emmanuel Krivine, Gábor Tákacs-Nagy, Hans Graf, Vassily Sinaisky, Tadaaki Otaka, and Leonard Slatkin.
In recent years Collins has performed at such festivals as the Verbier and Zermatt Festivals in Switzerland and Piano aux Jacobins and Nohant Festival Chopin in France. During the 2025/26 season Collins will return to the Wigmore Hall in London; his calendar also includes engagements in South Korea, Switzerland, Mexico, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus.
He will also return to London's Wigmore Hall.
Over the past two decades 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), followed by a recording 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 recording of four Mozart piano concertos directed from the keyboard with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. A Chopin recital CD was released in 2017, a co-production between RTÉ Lyric FM and Claves Records, while in spring 2020 Claves released a recording of the Mozart Piano Quartets with Rosanne Philippens (violin), Máté Szücs (viola) and István Várdai (cello).
This was followed in 2022 by a solo album “The Bright Day is Done” featuring diverse pieces inspired by the cyclical nature of night and day. Collins’ most recent Claves release is “Hommage à Pleyel”, recorded on a restored Pleyel concert grand piano dating from 1937.
Finghin Collins makes a significant contribution to the musical landscape of his native Ireland, where he resides. Since 2013, he has been Artistic Director of Music for Galway. He is also the founding Artistic Director, since 2006, of the New Ross Piano Festival in Wexford as well as the Artistic Director, since 2023, of the Dublin International Piano Competition.
Collins is the Chairman of the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland in 2023 and 2025.
In 2017, the National University of Ireland awarded him an honorary doctorate in music.