Matinee: 3rd

 “The third of the delightful matinees of Messrs. Mills and Sarasate was given at Steinway Hall yesterday afternoon, before a large and refined audience. The programme was exceedingly interesting, as may be seen from the appended works [see above]. 

The performance was of that superior character that might be anticipated from two such artists as Mills and Sarasate. The trio was a gem in the perfection and expression of its delivery, and Mrs. Brown sang with more breadth of tone and sentiment than we have ever heard her before. As may be seen, the programme was of a somewhat lighter character than those of the preceding matinées.”

“The assemblages which continue to fill Steinway’s smaller hall and part of the larger, at the Saturday matinées of Messrs. Mills and Sarasate, show how firm a hold this species of concert has gained in the appreciation of a small but cultivated class among our lovers of music. Good chamber concerts of this kind are effective agencies of musical culture. They lack the social glitter and scenic splendor of the opera, the personal interest of the choral societies, or the imposing majesty of orchestral execution. The prime and only business of the occasion is music, pure and simple in its finest expression, and most appreciative interpretation. Freed from the mingled bewilderment and fascination of symphonic grandeurs, the mind of the listener has leisure to study dispassionately the musical thought, the exquisite grace, the subtle, creative and imaginative power of the great master minds. An evening passed in listening to the trios, quintetes and sonatas of composers like Beethoven, Mozart and Schumann is in the highest sense a musical education and a lofty spiritual refreshment as well. It may be long before it is our good fortune again to hear together three such performers as the gentlemen who constitute the Steinway trio. Mr. Bergner, though he shows less breadth of treatment and firmness of grip in his command of the violoncello than some artists, is excellent for his delicacy and sweetness of tone, and for his discreet subordination to the emergency of the composition. Señor Sarasate, apart from his merits as a solo violinist, is admirable for his performance in concerted music, for his modesty in putting aside all the pretension and ostentatious display of the virtuoso, and bending all the energies of his cultivated skill to ‘playing well his part,’ and contributing just his share, no more nor less, to that exquisite whole—the perfect trio. Mr. Mills is so well-known as a pianist that it would be superfluous to do more than add our confirmation to the general verdict, which pronounces him one of the soundest, most accurate, and honest, yet brilliant performers ever heard in New-York. Those who recognized how greatly his perfect composure, yet refinement, his crisp, clear, delicate and liquid touch, added in bringing out the subtle shades and inner [illegible] of the delightful Beethoven trio in E flat on Saturday, will appreciate our comment.

We have only space to allude to the most interesting numbers (including recalls) on Saturday, such as Alard’s ‘Masaniello’ Fantaisie, and Joachim’s ‘Ungarische Tänze,’ by Señor Sarasate; Mr. Mills’s own ‘Mazourka’ and ‘Fairy Fingers’ and Tausig’s ‘Caprice Waltz’ for the piano-forte, with the waltz and romance of Chopin given by Mr. Mills in response to encores. Instead of the duo from Oberon at the end of the performance [end of review, approximately two lines, missing].”

Includes programme.