Philharmonic Society of New York Rehearsal: 2nd

“The Academy of Music was pretty well filled yesterday afternoon on the occasion of the second rehearsal for the second concert of this time-honored society. Mr. Carl Bergmann came to his post promptly at half past two o’clock, and the rehearsal opened with a symphony, No. 4 in G minor, by Joachim Raff. A more commonplace, uninteresting affair has never been presented by the society to their subscribers. The opening allegro is founded on a theme of Kucken, and is clumsily worked out; the succeeding andante is the only tolerable part of the symphony, the scherzo is of the hornpipe order and the finale flashy and threadbare of ideas. One would hardly expect this from the composer of one very popular and very ingeniously constructed symphony, but it is not surprising to those acquainted with the musical career of Raff. Were it not for Liszt he would scarcely ever have been known outside his own narrow circle. That he is clever in a certain sense no one will deny, but that he is possessed of any large share of original musical ideas no one will have the hardihood to maintain. He deals largely in machine music, stealing and culling from everybody, and exciting admiration only from the ingenuity with which he arranges his spoil and the intimate knowledge he possesses of the rare mechanism of the orchestra. After Raff came Berlioz, in an extract from ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ a symphony which is probably one of the most characteristic of his individual style of orchestral writing. Berlioz is the most successful exponent of that school of mechanism in music which Raff has so vainly attempted to study. His knowledge of the resources of an orchestra seems almost illimitable, but the poverty of musical ideas in his works mars the admirable handling of the instruments. After the two carpenter pieces came that lovely tone poem, like a transformation scene, ‘The Consecration of the House’ overture by Beethoven. It was quite a relief after the others.”