Anna Mehlig Matinee Recital: 1st

Includes program.

“Miss Anna Mehlig’s matinée, at Steinway Hall, yesterday, was much more numerously attended than the weather gave reason to hope. The programme of the recital appeared in Friday’s Times; it included compositions of [see above]. The mere enumeration of these names indicates the difficulty of the task Miss Mehlig set herself and performed to the manifest delight of her hearers. In our judgment, however, the lady was not at her best, and we can only city the third movement of Chopin’s sonata—the marche funèbre—and Taussig’s setting of one of Strauss’ ‘Soirées de Vienne’ as specimens of her most expressive and finished work.”

“Miss Mehlig gave the first of her two matinées on Saturday afternoon, at Steinway (small) Hall. The unfavorable weather prevented many from attending, for the room was but half filled. Remarkable to say that notwithstanding the inclemency, that audience was made up almost entirely of ladies.

The audience, however, although meagre was one of connoisseurs, able and eager to appreciate the merits of the pianist. The programme was as follows [see above].

Those who have studied the fugues of Bach and Handel, and who can revel for hours in the mathematically musical minds of these great men, have been often heard to complain of the watery, lukewarm patchwork affairs to which we are now treated by our modern writers, with but one exception, and that is Mendelssohn.

The fugues of Mendelssohn are decidedly of the Bach stamp, and are likely to deceive the most sharp-sighted critic, were it not for the melody, the finer blending, by which we recognize the modern period, and here and there those little touches so peculiar to Mendelssohn. Miss Mehlig’s performance of the prelude and fugue was a model of natural and expressive phrasing, the bravura passages, of the utmost rapidity, leaving the beautiful quality of tone drawn from the piano and the power of graduating it under all conditions wholly unimpaired.

The Fantasia of Haydn, a quaint piano-forte piece, is a composition no less unobtrusive than charming, the brilliant and elegant character of the passages contained in it, independently of the melodic beauty of the composition, displaying brilliancy, tenderness and pathos. Miss Mehlig played it with remarkable skill, and no better foundation could be devised for the study of a young pianist than some of the piano-forte compositions of Haydn.

In the Scherzo by Weber, the Novelettes of Schumann, and the Impromptu by Schubert, Miss Mehlig’s performance was something of consummate taste, her extremely fine execution of the various pieces vindicating her claim to a very high position among the pianists of the day.

Of the other pieces performed the Sonata by Chopin alone calls for any especial remark. This inimitable piece is one of the most exquisite and characteristic specimens of the genius of this composer, and a very difficult work to realize in its many subtle beauties. It is very rarely that we find pianists who satisfy us in their interpretation of Chopin’s music. If, then, Miss Mehlig’s performance of the Sonata was not so replete with poetical expression as we could have desired, she showed throughout wonderful aptitude as a pianist in pieces comprehending the most opposite of styles.”