Mason-Thomas Chamber Music Soirée: 4th

“Messrs. Mason and Thomas’s last concert we enjoyed more than any of this season; that we did not enjoy the others so well, was perhaps our own fault as much as that of the selection. The pieces given on this occasion were Mozart’s Quartet in F major, No. 8; Schubert’s Trio in B flat major, opus 99; and Beethoven’s Quartet in C major, No. 3, of opus 59. The last movement of the Mozart Quartet (Allegro), sounds somewhat made, although only by comparison with its composer’s usually overflowing vein of melody, and creative power. The Schubert Trio is throughout a lovely lyric, presenting many sides of a mood, at once tender, melancholy and chivalrous,

            ‘—that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

            Bring sad thoughts to the mind,’

Very clearly expressed in beautiful music, music that makes us forget momentarily, that we live in a land where poets and artists are accounted good for nothing idiots—for do not most of them go about with their eyes fixed on some impossible ideal in the clouds, when every sensible fellow knows, that to find the way to make money (the only reasonably aim in life), he must keep his looks perserveringly turned downwards? The second movement of the Beethoven Quartet (Andante con moto quasi Allegretto) a pathetic song in the upper voice, accompanied by the dull pizzicato of the violoncello, reminded us of a country wake in Ireland, when, during the pauses of the ‘keen,’ one woman sings the praises of the dead in a wild minor, interrupted now and then by short, low sobs from the others. Yet the whole movement seemed most to us an expression of deep homesickness. The Finale (Allegro molto) is a spring storm—not a raw March storm, certainly ! [sic] but sweet and strong.”

Gives program.

            “This time we did not only have a model programme, but also a model performance. There was a fine progression, not only in the interest the music caused, but also in the rendering of the pieces. Mozart’s Quartet, although composed at a time when he was but a boy, offers that fluency and control over the material, which characterizes already the early period of his artistic career. But on the other hand, this very quartet offers a good many traits of musical boyhood, which in spite of his charm cannot create in us but a very passing interest. Not so with Schubert’s Trio, the second piece of the programme. Although this work too shows that want of polish and well defined form which is the great drawback of Schubert’s larger compositions, although we miss again in this trio that refined taste, those careful considerations of what ought to be, and what ought not to be, which distinguish the works of his most talented successors, although especially the last part is crowded with a great many ideas and passages, without unity of purpose, yet this music touches our heart, our imagination, it fills our minds with pictures, that respond to our modern feelings and views, it draws us constantly into their midst and never loses our sympathy.—The same is, of course, the case in a much higher degree with Beethoven’s Quartet in C, op. 59, with the performance of which the soiree concluded. It was the feature of the evening, and seldom has Beethoven’s genius spoken more mightily than on this occasion.”