Festival Week of Grand Oratorios and Concerts: 4th

Includes program.

Includes program.

“In the afternoon, a liberal programme of miscellaneous music was interpreted to the delight of a large audience. Mr. Rubinstein recited, with his wonted variety of touch and with perfect finish of style, his concerto No. 4, in D minor, the most tuneful of the important piano compositions of his own he has made us familiar with; and, in part second of the entertainment, he played a theme and variations by Haydn, and the ever-welcome ‘Erl King’ and ‘Turkish March.’ Mr. Wieniawski’s pieces were respectively an excerpt from his ‘Etudes-caprices,’ the eloquent ‘Elegy,’ by Ernst, and a short and fanciful composition embodying snatches of Russian song and imitations of Russian out-of-doors cries, and fancifully called ‘Le Carnaval Russe.’ The orchestra distinguished itself mainly by a fine rendering of two movements from Raff’s ‘Im Walde.’ The solos of Mrs. West and of Mr. Whitney did not impress us greatly, and their united attack upon Mozart’s sweet ‘Le dove prende’ was, in our judgment, less commendable still.” 

“In the execution of these selections all the performers seemed to be in admirable spirit. Rubinstein played his favorite concerto superbly, and threw his grandest expression into the ‘Erl-king’ and the ‘Turkish March,’ though he was evidently annoyed by the misbehavior of a few persons near the stage who chose the opening of the diminuendo passage in the latter piece as an appropriate moment for getting up and going home. Mr. Wieniawski showed his best sostenuto style in the beautiful Beethoven Romanza (the one in F) and the favorite Ernst Elegie, and the orchestra, consisting simply of Mr. Thomas’s own sixty players, gave a charming interpretation of the ‘Fidelio’ overture and the two delicious Twilight movements of Raff’s Forest Symphony. Their accompaniment to the concerto was as usual a triumph of good taste, good sentiment, and good drilling. The vocal music was satisfactory, Mr. Whitney’s air from Mendelssohn’s ‘Son and Stranger’ being delivered with heartiness and facility and Mrs. West’s solo from the ‘Creation’ with delicacy and expression. The duet from ‘The Magic Flute’ was also enjoyable.

The crowd at the concert was enormous, but it was surpassed at the evening performance, when the festival reached its climax.”

“The matinée concert commenced with [see above]. The orchestra have become so perfectly familiarized with the four overtures which Beethoven wrote for his opera that the performance of any of them cannot help being finished and artistic. Mr. Myron W. Whitney selected a most trying air, and went through the ordeal with success. The ‘Son and Stranger’ is too little known in this city for a work displaying all the fanciful imagery of thought that is generally considered as the exclusive characteristic of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ The selection made by him requires a voice of unusual flexibility and high training to make its rendering at all intelligible. Its rapid measures call for finish and ease of execution not often attainable by bass singers. Mr. Whitney is not addicted to ad captandum tricks in his singing; but in everything he attempts he gives evidence of the honest, conscientious artist. He narrowly escaped an encore. Wieniawski played a most charming adagio by Rubinstein and an élégie by Ernst, in both of which his wonderful cantabile method was brought out in all its beauty. He also rendered a polonaise of his own, which had the equivocal merit of abounding in enormous technical difficulties to an extent that marred the intelligibility of some of the phrases, and a descriptive piece called, ‘The Russian Carnival,’ another work from his fertile brain.”