Concert for the Benefit of the Women’s Aid Society

“This admirable vocal organization gave one of their characteristic concerts last evening for the benefit of the Women’s Aid Society and Home for Training Young Girls, a very worthy and valuable institution. The programme comprised the following selections [see above]. These selections are so entirely different from what one hears in ordinary concerts and so interesting in their quaintness and expression that we give their names, as above, in full. Mr. Hardenbrook is an excellent conductor, and has the finest vocal materials at his command that a musician could hope for. They sing with a perfection of ensemble, intelligence and unanimity of expression which few vocal societies in this city are capable of. The solos were the weakest part of the performance, with the exception of Bishop’s illustration of Titania’s loving appeal to Bottom, ‘Bid Me Discourse,’ which Miss Perring sung in true artistic style. Her voice is light, but of the most exquisite quality and trained in the best school. The audience was very large and of a fashionable order. Such a society should be more frequently heard in public.”

“The first concert which the New-York Glee and Madrigal Society has given this season took place last night at Steinway Hall. It was for the benefit of the Women’s Aid Society, and attracted a larger and well dressed audience. The chorus, directed by Mr. W. A. Hardenbrook, an amateur, was of the usual dimensions, but hardly of the usual quality. The basses were strong and firm, the sopranos fair, the middle parts rather more than commonly uncertain. Very few of the selections, consequently, were given with the precision of tone and grace of expression to which this class of music owes so much of its effect, and these few were such comparatively familiar pieces as Bishop’s ‘Come O’er the Brook, Bessie,’ and Mendelssohn’s ‘Awake, the Starry Midnight.’ These two, with Barnby’s quartette ‘Sweet and Low,’ were the best performances of the evening. We listened to these, and to portions of some of the other selections, with so much delight that it may seem ungrateful to quarrel with the remainder; but the Madrigal concerts of the past two years have made us fastidious, and if we judge this Society by a high standard, it is one which itself has helped to raise.”

“The Glee and Madrigal Society gave their second concert for this season on Friday evening last at Steinway Hall, on which occasion they rendered four madrigals and five glees with much of the old delicacy and sweetness. Miss Hutchings sang, or rather recited, Hullah’s song ‘The Storm,’ with great energy and effect; but the other solos were simply wearisome. We missed with regret some voices from the chorus which formerly helped to produce a fuller and finer body of sound, and there is less hope than last year of the Society’s becoming a permanent institution. In the even of its demise, its epitaph must be ‘died of squabbles and solos.’”