Jullien Concert

“The experiment of Summer evening entertainments at the Terrace Garden is not new. In former years the gas-lit groves of that sylvan retreat have many a time resounded with the strains of the martial brass, and soothing scrape of the fiddle, and the clink of the festive beer-glass. Successive proprietors have found their reward more, we fear, in the consciousness of well doing than in the comfort of a swelling purse. But the latest venture opens with brighter prospects than its predecessors. The Garden has been somewhat improved. By the simple device of moving the main entrance around the corner it has been taken out of the plebian locality of the Third-ave., and carried into the severe respectability of Fifty-eighth-st. The interior arrangements—the sheds, the tables, the gravel walks, the flower-pots, and the fountains—have apparently been more or less completely renovated, until, as an East-Side enthusiast might say, the establishment presents a gorgeous scene of bewildering and coruscating splendors. The music is furnished by M. Louis George Jullien—a gentleman who displays many of the peculiarities of dress and manner, as well as much of the talent, of his famous father. His orchestra is a good one, selected from capital material, and led with a spirit which it is very entertaining to witness. M. Jullien does not make his programmes too good for his audiences. He gives waltzes and quadrilles, and operatic selections, and plenty of those great show pieces in which his father used to delight, and he throws in frequent solos, both vocal and instrumental; and when the people tire of all this, they have weiss beer, and brown-bread, and ice-cream, and go to the shooting gallery, where noiseless pop-guns are perpetually fired off to a wooden young lady in a Prussian helmet, who beats the drum whenever she is pierced to the heart, or a colored brother whose mortal agonies are indicated by a frantic performance on the tambourine. The band numbers about 33 pieces, and Mr. Adolf Neuendorff relieves Mr. Jullien now and then at the conductor’s stand. Upon the whole it is a very nice place.”

“The series of open-air concerts that Mr. Jullien has commenced at the Terrace Garden promise to be very agreeable entertainments. The garden itself is pretty and breezy, and it is infinitely pleasanter to listen to music on a warm summer night after this al fresco fashion than to be cooped up in a concert room hot with the flare of gas lights and noisy with the shuffling of feet. Jullien’s garden has about it the real Germanic flavor. To go there is an expeditious way of paying a rapid visit to Vaterland.

“The orchestra is an admirable one, composed of the best of our Philharmonic players, and the programmes, instead of being wholly made up of instrumental pieces, are relieved by ballads, sung by such excellent vocalists as Habelmann and Matthison. Altogether, the Terrace Garden bids fair to be on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings the pleasantest place of resort within the city limits.”