Central Park Garden Concert

Brilliant and instructive character of the music soon to be furnished.

Includes program.

“The opening of the season of Summer concerts at the Central Park Garden, always an occasion of considerable public interest, was last night attended with more than usual éclat. The audience filled the place so tightly that promenading was out of the question, and as early as 8 o’clock the crowd was uncomfortably dense. Mr. Theodore Thomas had a rousing welcome when he came forward, and the compliment was repeated after the intermissions. Indeed, there was no mistaking the general feeling of regard for the conductor who has done so much for music, not only in this city, but all over the United States, and whose recent festival achievements have so greatly increased his reputation, both at home and in distant cities. Enthusiasm and good humor prevailed all through the evening. Everybody came early and staid [sic] late, and only one regret was expressed—that Mr. Thomas had not a concert hall big enough to hold all who would be glad to hear him. Of the performance it is unnecessary to speak in detail. The band is always in admirable trim, and though beer glasses rattle and waiters scuff along the floor, it plays with consummate care, and taste, and intelligence. The programme was well chosen for an opening night, the pieces generally being lively and easy of comprehension.” 

“While it is incumbent on us to mention that the Central Park Garden was last evening thrown open to the public for the Summer, and to note that a very fine programme was interpreted by Mr. Thomas’ orchestra, under the direction of Mr. Thomas, to the delight of an audience that crowded the spacious hall in every part, there is as little occasion to enter into details of the event as to describe in succession the return of the four seasons of the year. Mr. Thomas’ very attractive and instructive entertainments are as well known and as highly prized as could be wished, and the annual reappearance of the esteemed musician and his band, prior to a sojourn of five months in a very agreeable local, is a too familiar theme to be dwelt upon at length. Suffice it say, then, that the opening night of the new series of concerts was all that could be wished. Mr. Thomas was welcomed by an overflowing audience; the performance of his band supplied the wonted evidence of individual talent and capital discipline; and there was a great deal of applause and an unusually marked tendency, evinced by encores, to render the recital longer by at least one-third of its intended duration. The selections were representative of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Rossini, and Raff. They have been frequently interpreted by Mr. Thomas’ men on occasions when, thanks to the slighter pressure of news, we were accorded the space which a written recognition of the excellencies of their delivery exacted. So this reference need include nothing further than an announcement that Mr. Thomas’ orchestra will play at the Central Park Garden nightly until October.”

“Central Park Garden was reopened for the season last night, a large company assembling to welcome Mr. Thomas back to his familiar haunt. The orchestra thoroughly maintained its old reputation, successfully interpreting a varied and interesting programme. Among the visitors to the Garden was Signor Tamberlik.”

“Perhaps the rush after postal cards is the only recent pleasant public excitement to which the attendance and excitement witnessed on the opening of Central Park Garden, and the reappearance of Mr. Theodore Thomas and his celebrated band can be fitly compared. The changes that have been made in the hall and its adjacent corridors are not important beyond the banishment of the ornate mirrors, which had the questionable advantage of reminding one of a defunct ice cream saloon, which had long since known its palmiest days. Everything susceptible of looking better beneath a fresh coat of paint had been thus recomplexioned, and a variety of plants were picturesquely disposed in vases and slender festoons. The appropriateness of letting well enough alone has seldom been more felicitously illustrated. This thin embroidery of leafage, accentuated here and there with a heavier algrette of flowers, set off the large room lightly and airily, and insinuated a conviction of Summer much more impressively than a preponderance of looking glasses could do. If we cannot have Summer here in reality, let us, by all means, aid imagination.

We do not propose giving a formal report of the manner in which Mr. Thomas and his band interpreted the programme. The average New York audience may be Cyrenaic in its passion for change; but a New York audience that is fond of music—and such was the character of the audience at Central Park Garden last night—desires no more novelty than Mr. Thomas gives it, and last evening he certainly gave it nothing that can be called absolutely new. There was French and Italian and German music, and selections from Auber and Weber and Beethoven, contrasted with melody from Schubert and the sparkling phrensy of Strauss. There were movements as rich as the red-flushed russet of Autumn, and harmonies as single and unpretending as the buttercup’s infant simplicity. For Mr. Thomas presided, and the orchestra he commanded is composed of instrumentalists who have worked together long enough to coalesce with as much perfection as the different proportions in a temperament. From the overture to ‘Masaniello,’ with which the concert began, to the ‘March’ by Michaelis, with which it ended, the orchestral interpretations were beautifully firm and even. There were no tantalizing undulations of effort, resulting in proficiency in one number and mediocrity in the next. The rich stateliness and harmonic treatment of Weber, as evinced in the selection from ‘Preciosa,’ received as adequate and conscientious expression as the eighth Symphony of Beethoven, which, quite as much as any other of that great composer’s symphonies, is the exponent of his spiritual experience during the years he was deprived of that exquisite sense which he lavished his existence in gratifying in others. The ‘Amaryllis’ air, composed by Louis XIII, is very much what might be expected to proceed from the invention of an effeminate and eccentric monarch, so chaste in reputation that no scandal ever attached to the court ladies who became his favorites, yet so abnormal in the amours that he did have that even his accomplishments, like his taste for musical composition, for instance, were tinged with a bizarre sensuousness. The rendition of this air was not among the shining successes of the evening, being greatly eclipsed by the overture to ‘William Tell’ and Strauss’ waltz, ‘Wine, Woman and Song.’

These garden concerts have now obtained a hold which entitle them to rank as institutions. It is something to have within easy distance a handsome and respectable resort, where music, moonshine and Moselle may be enjoyed simultaneously; where we may applaud ‘Martha’ while we sip Markobrunner, and imbibe equal proportions of ‘Lohengrin’ and lemonade. Amid such surroundings even the business man finds himself mellowing into momentary romance, and we should scarcely be amazed to hear that Mr. Gosche himself, overpowered by the lights, the music, the flowers and the Rudesheimer, sometimes wishes that managing the financial department of garden concerts were compatible with his being a boy again. Some cynic declares that all our joys are somewhat like those shy creatures that, whenever they are watched, roll themselves up in a ball and pretend to be dead. At any rate, this does not appear to be the case with the joy of garden concerts. Another cynic, this time a poetical one, remarks:--

For not to man on earth is given

The ripe fulfillment of desire;

Desire of heaven itself is heaven,

Unless the fashion faint and tire,

Evidently the passion for Thomas and his Summer concerts has not yet fainted and grown tired, though we cannot precisely think that the wish to enjoy them is quite tantamount to the enjoyment itself.”