Onslow Quintette Club Concert

To include selections from the works of Mendelssohn and Rubinstein. 

“The Onslow Quintette Club gave their final concert on Wednesday evening. The small attendance made it very clear that the number of persons in this community who have any interest in the higher forms of chamber music is exceedingly small. The history of all the organizations of which we have any personal knowledge, formed for the purpose of giving chamber music, only serves to confirm that conclusion. There was Eisfeld’s quartette, an admirably composed affair, but it played four years to a little handful of people, and almost always on rainy nights, as though the heavens themselves tried to discourage the work. After this came the Mason and Thomas Club. Theodore Thomas played first violin, Mosenthal second, Matzka viola, and Bergner violoncello. But they had no pecuniary success. If they paid the expense of the hall they were satisfied, the rest they did for the sake of art. The Mendelssohn Quintette of Boston has excited a certain love for this class of music, but even they have to play arrangements of Italian opera music to make their concerts successful. And now Florio and his little band have been pursuing the same weary road for two seasons, and with exactly similar results. They have been assisted by a vocal quartette, but this does not seem to have helped matters, which was not so much to be wondered at, for the voices were not in sympathy and the singing was indifferent in quality. On the whole it may be said that instrumental chamber music is at a discount in this city. It is a pity, for some of the finest treasures of art lie hidden there.”

Reviewer unable to attend the concert. “This organization has done, in a quiet way, much to create and cultivate a taste for classical music, and their programmes are always selected with discrimination and interpreted with fidelity and skill.”