Concert
Event Information
Venue(s):
Steinway Hall
Performance Forces:
Instrumental, Vocal
Record Information
Status:
Published
Last Updated:
1 November 2023
Performance Date(s) and Time(s)
16 Dec 1871, 8:00 PMProgram Details
The string quartet also performed an unidentified work by Beethoven, Andante con variazioni, A major. The Chopin etude performed by Mills was in C-sharp minor.
Performers and/or Works Performed
1)
8)
Composer(s): Cooke
10)
aka Death and the maiden;
Quartet, strings, no. 14, D minor ;
Tod und das Mädchen
Composer(s): Schubert
13)
Composer(s): Horsley
Citations
4)
“At Steinway Hall, Saturday, Miss Antoinette Sterling entertained a large and attentive audience by her admirable singing. The concert was given in her name and the list of assisting artists was very large, including Dr. Damrosch and others of equal standing. Miss Sterling sang an aria from Rossini, the old ballad of ‘Caller Herrin,’ and the exquisite setting by Hullah of the ‘Three Fishers.’ In all she was warmly and deservedly applauded.”
5)
“On Saturday evening Miss Sterling gave a concert at Steinway Hall. The musical attractions have been so numerous this fall, and the demand upon the purse so heavy, that Steinway Hall has been the scene of many disappointments. Witness the Prince Galitzin’s concerts and many others of greater excellence and equal failure. It is therefore all the more to the credit of Miss Sterling’s popularity that she was able to fill the hall. It was a substantial and well-deserved recognition of her artistic worth.
The concert was a pleasant one. It opened with Schubert’s quartette in D minor (for stringed instruments), a posthumous work and a favorite with the famous Florentine quartette club, who brought it prominently into notice. There is a place for everything, and certainly an ordinary popular concert is not the place for all the fine movements of a stringed quartette. It is sure to weary an audience however well played, for such a composition is not easily apprehended [sic] by any but musicians. This is especially true of the work in question, the andante and scherzo of which alone are simple enough in structure to address the general ear. Dr. Damrosch played the first violin in the quartette, and in a subsequent part of the programme played the second and third movements from Mendelssohn’s E minor concerto. Such a work is deprived of half its significance and more than half its beauty when the bald accompaniment of a pianoforte is substituted for the rich and varied support of an orchestra. Dr. Damrosch is a man of musical learning and an excellent player, but he has neither the sentiment, the grace, nor the delicacy requisite to the proper interpretation of the exquisite and essentially feminine andante of this concerto.
He is essentially a man possessed of many qualities to command respect and esteem, and yet his playing falls short of the highest attainment. It lacks, for reasons that are plain, but that we have not space to give, the power of strongly moving his audiences. A quartette of amateurs—Messrs. Bush, Rockwood, Beckett, and Aiken—sang Thomas Cooke’s elaborate glee, ‘Strike the Lyre,’ and Horsley’s ‘Retire, my Love,’ a composition of equal intricacy and even greater beauty. Mr. Mills played the Chopin C sharp minor study, to which he has for so many years shown his partiality, and which no other person plays so well, also a salterella of his own.
So much for the accessories.
As to Miss Sterling, we have never heard her sing so well or so effectively. Usually there has been too much repose in her manner, the feeling that she undoubtedly has for music being apparently withheld and her personality not carried into her art. There are many persons, both pianists and singers, who have a seeming repugnance to lay bare their emotions before a public audience by the exhibition of the passion emotion that the right interpretation of the work in hand calls for, or to connect their emotions with their voices. But this reserve is fatal to art—as fatal on the one hand as over-demonstration is on the other. It is the business of the true artist to express the emotion, and if it is not actually felt then to simulate it. This expression Miss Sterling gave on Saturday evening more fully than we have before heard her, both in her English songs and in the three German lieder by Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, a class of music with which she has a keen sympathy and in the interpretation of which she has few rivals.
An aria admirably suited to her voice, from Rossini’s ‘Italiana in Algeri,’ was also smoothly and felicitously given. Miss Sterling has a large and noble voice, and in quality it is of exceptional beauty. She carries to her hearers the sense of power, and the impression that she is in the possession of natural attributes and gifts that, properly directed and utilized, should make her the foremost contralto in America. Steinway Hall is, in point of size, well suited to her voice. Smaller halls are too limited for its breadth and volume.
The songs which evidently pleased the greatest number of her hearers were Gow’s ‘Caller Herrin’—the same that Agnes Robertson used to make an effect with years ago—and John Hullah’s ‘Three Fishers,’ which was given with great pathos. In actual musical merit these pieces were not to be compared with the German selections; but an audience responds generously to any artist who addresses it intelligently in its own language, and vocalists fling the priceless aid of their native tongue too readily aside, and forfeit half their power by using foreign words and leaving the music to tell obscurely its own story.”
6)
Miss Sterling sang songs by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Gow.
7)
“Miss Sterling’s concert on Saturday brought out that accomplished artist in some of the best songs in her répertoire, by Schubert, Schumann, Rossini and Mendelssohn. Her beautiful contralto voice was never heard to greater advantage.”
8)
Illegible in the America’s Historical Newspapers online database.
9)
“New York. The concert lately given by Miss Antoinette Sterling has called forth the most glowing newspaper notices, of which a friend has clipped out one for us [original source unidentified]. She has not a few friends here in Boston who will rejoice in her success.
Miss Sterling’s concert. The spacious Steinway Hall, floor and gallery, was crowded on Saturday evening with a fashionable and intelligent audience, genuine lovers of good music, who came expecting a rare treat, and were not disappointed. There were Mr. F. Ritter, the distinguished musician and composer, and his equally distinguished wife, Mrs. Fanny Raymond Ritter; Dr. E. G. Bartlett; the most remarkable alto in America, who has persisted for a quarter of a century in restricting his voice to the parlor; Miss Maria Brainerd, the popular soprano; Miss Toedt, the admirable violiniste; Mrs. Jameson, a vocalist of high repute; Mr. Lasar and his daughter, who is already winning high praise in musical circles; Mr. Bowman, the excellent critic of the Sun, and hosts of others well- known in the artistic and newspaper world, whom to name would occupy a column. It was an audience which, in itself, was the highest possible compliment to Miss Sterling, and a tangible evidence of the appreciation of this distinguished artist’s conscientious efforts in the promotion of high art.
Of the performance it is scarcely necessary to speak at length. Every selection was first class and skillfully interpreted by the best musicians. The string quartet, Dr. Damrosch, Schuessel, Matzka, and Bergner, played a quartet of Schubert magnificently. The blending of the instruments was especially fine, no one taking undue prominence. The Andante was delicious and the Presto so brilliantly vivacious as to infect the heads of all the audience to nod in unison to its sprightly measures. They also played the Andante con Variazioni (A major) of Beethoven with superb effect. Dr. Damrosch, with Karl Eisner at the piano, rendered the Andante of Mendelssohn’s masterly E Minor Concerto with the pure expression of artists thoroughly imbued with the true meaning of the composition. The introduction of the men’s quartet, Messrs. Bush, Rockwood, Beckett and Aiken, gave a delightful variety to the programme. They sang Cook’s old but always fresh ‘Strike the Lyre,’ and, in response to a hearty encore, sang ‘Retire, my love,’ by Horsley. These voices harmonized excellently, and unite as one with fine effect. Mr. Mills, one of the very few pianists in this country entitled to the name of a great artist, played, in his usual brilliant manner, a study of Chopin, and his own sparkling ‘Saltarella.’
And now we come to Miss Sterling, the central figure of the evening’s delightful entertainment. On her appearance she was most cordially welcomed. The lady who sat next to us remarked that she was magnificently dressed—a little attention which seems to be indispensable to the success of an artist in this day of extravagance in everything. Her selections were [see above]. Miss Sterling sings the Italian music with as great and unqualified success as the songs of Schubert and Schumann, which she has made peculiarly her own. Her execution on this occasion surpassed herself. It was the performance of a true artist, who, by long and ardent study, has mastered the compositions, and is able to give them their true interpretation. Besides being in excellent voice, Miss Sterling seemed inspired by the cordiality of her reception. We have never heard her sing better, whether in the difficult solos, or in the existing glee, ‘O my love is like the red, red rose,’ with Messrs. Bush Rockwood and Aiken, in which she sang the first tenor part. Her chest tones are the most remarkable in her voice, and are round, pure, and free from the roughness too often found in artists of the highest reputation.
But we cannot dwell on this delightful concert. It was a rich repast from first to last, and although it continued for over two hours, it seemed scarce half that length. Floral tributes were numerous, the Arion Society recognizing Miss Sterling’s merit, by the compliment rarely given by societies to any artist, of a very handsome basket of flowers.”