Itâs almost an inevitable question now, when you catch up with someone youâve not been in touch with during the Covid-19 pandemic â What have you been up to during the lockdown?
Pianist Finghin Collins, who is also artistic director of Music for Galway and the New Ross Piano Festival, has always presented himself as an easy-going, optimistic, forward-facing character, a former child prodigy who launched his international career by winning the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition at the age of 22 in 1999.
But, even for him, the first lockdown last March was âvery difficultâ.
âIt came with such abruptness. There was nothing in place, no mental preparation, no physical infrastructures, online facilities. We werenât set up for it. It was a great shock to the system. What I said to many people at the time was the hardest thing about it was the lack of a finite end. We didnât know when or how it would end. We were getting bad news all