Arion Society Concert

“A concert was given by the Arion Society last evening at their club-house in St. Mark’s- place. It was very numerously attended, and it afforded, evidently, much pleasure. The programme, however, was not very eclectic, and we are not sure but that even the purely German audience would have approved occasional hospitality to foreign composers. The interpretation of the bill, of course, was thoroughly creditable. The faultlessness and suavity of the violin playing of Dr. Leopold Damrosch has already been written of in these columns, and it is not too high praise to say that a more intellectual, refined, and finished delivery of Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’—a work in which the technique of all the classical schools of the instrument must be drawn upon by the executant—could nowhere be enjoyed. How admirable the accompaniment to Dr. Damrosch’s performance may be inferred from the name of the accompanist: Mr. S. B. Mills was at the piano throughout the evening, and it was his interpretation of Chopin’s exquisite ‘Etude No. 5,’ and of Taussig’s ‘Soirée de Vienne,’ that constituted the most generally appreciable part of the entertainment. The remainder of the selections consisted of songs by Lachner, Schubert, Liszt, Rubinstein and Damrosch, the solos interpreted by Frau Helene Damrosch, whose singing is creditable in point of style and expressiveness, but whose voice is by no means sympathetic, and the concerted pieces by the choral forces of the Society, who show much improvement since the tutelage of Dr. Damrosch has commenced. The lied by Rubinstein was called ‘Nullum vinum nisi Hungaricum,’ and needed as an excuse for its rendering the authority of the composer’s signature.”