Thomas Popular Garden Concert

Event Information

Venue(s):
Central Park Garden

Manager / Director:
J. [manager] Gosche

Conductor(s):
Theodore Thomas [see also Thomas Orchestra]

Price: $.35; $2.35 private boxes

Event Type:
Orchestral

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
25 January 2020

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

10 Jul 1869, 8:00 PM

Performers and/or Works Performed

2)
Composer(s): Matzka
3)
Composer(s): Rossini
4)
Composer(s): Strauss
5)
Composer(s): Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
6)
aka Etoile du nord, L', overture
Composer(s): Meyerbeer
7)
aka Adelaida
Composer(s): Beethoven
Participants:  Jules [cornet] Levy
8)
Composer(s): Bousquet
9)
Composer(s): Unknown composer
10)
Composer(s): Mozart
11)
aka Air varié ; Air varie; Air and variations on Alexis
Composer(s): Hartmann
Participants:  Jules [cornet] Levy
12)
aka Carnival messenger
Composer(s): Strauss
13)
aka Quadrille on Schöne Zuluna
Composer(s): Unknown composer

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New-Yorker Musik-Zeitung, 09 July 1869.
2)
Advertisement: New York Herald, 10 July 1869, 2.
3)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 10 July 1869, 7.
4)
Review: New York Post, 10 July 1869.

General overview of the concert series. “There is no place of amusement in the city which is so well attended just as present as the Central Park Garden. The hall and garden are always cool and breezy, and the fresh air which wanders into the enclosure from the neighboring Central Park is exceedingly grateful in contrast with the heated atmosphere of the theatres. Mr. Thomas’s orchestra is large, well balanced, carefully drilled, and, in the main, admirably led; and the music which it furnishes comprises symphonies and overtures by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Meyerbeer, as well as lighter selections from Bellini, Verdi, Strauss and Offenbach. That these concerts have already improved the musical taste of the people is shown by the fact that, while Strauss’s waltzes and Offenbach’s quadrilles were the pieces which received the most frequent applause during the first season[,] the audience this summer evidently prefers the grand harmonies of the German masters to the sensuous melodies of the song and waltz writers. Mr. Levy’s cornet solos are not only faultlessly played, but the music which he selects is never meretricious or worthless. The general management of the Garden is excellent, and drunkenness or disorder of any kind is a rare occurrence. The average number of persons who nightly visit the Garden is nearly three thousand, and a more orderly and respectable audience cannot be found at any of our theatres, not excepting Booth’s or Wallack’s.”