The idea for this album took shape in 2022, when pianist Finghin Collins was invited to perform at the Lavaux Classic Festival in Switzerland, playing a reconstructed Pleyel instrument, a 1937 concert grand piano, meticulously restored by Swiss master craftsman Matthias Maurer. "The experience was revelatory," Finghin Collins recalls. "The response from both audience and press was unanimously positive. I made a new friend in this Pleyel piano, whose sound I completely fell in love with, and with the remarkable ease with which I can produce beautiful tones on this instrument."

The album is dedicated to the Austrian musician Ignaz Pleyel, the distinguished composer and entrepreneur who lived between 1757 and 1831 and settled in France after the age of twenty. He composed symphonies, operas, and chamber works, published scores by his contemporaries, and in 1807 founded a piano manufacturing company that would become highly influential in 19th-century France. His instruments were famously preferred by Frédéric Chopin.

The disc Homage to Pleyel features works by Joseph Haydn, Ignaz Pleyel, Frédéric Chopin, and Claude Debussy, alongside pieces by lesser-known composers such as Joseph O'Kelly and Georges Pfeiffer, who collaborated with the renowned Pleyel piano company.

Finghin Collins is one of Ireland's most distinguished musicians. Born in Dublin in 1977, he studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with John O'Conor and later at the Geneva Conservatory with Dominique Merlet. He has won numerous awards in international competitions, most notably First Prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland in 1999. Since then, his career has flourished, with recitals and concerto appearances on major stages across Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia, collaborating with internationally acclaimed conductors such as Gianandrea Noseda, Sakari Oramo, Emmanuel Krivine, and Christoph Eschenbach. Finghin Collins also serves as director of prestigious festivals in Ireland and holds an honorary doctorate in music from the National University of Ireland. Over the past two decades, he has released albums of Classical and Romantic repertoire with the Swiss label Claves Records. His most recent recording is this album, "Hommage à Pleyel," recorded in February 2025 at the Théâtre Populaire Romand in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.