Central Park Garden Concert

Includes program.

Includes program; Beethoven’s symphony was performed in its entirety.

“The Garden Concerts have opened this season with unusually fine promise. The attendance has been excellent—even during the hard storm of Friday night there was a respectable gathering of ladies and gentlemen—the audiences seem to be of better quality than ever, and the programmes are certainly stronger than they have been before. Of the pieces played on Thursday and Friday evenings, those that awakened the heartiest response from the public were the Andante from Beethoven’s C minor Symphony, and the selection from the first Act of ‘Lohengrin.’ There was one other arrangement from Wagner, namely, the remarkable quintet, ‘Die selige Morgentraum-Deutweise,’ from the third Act of the ‘Meistersinger.’ Mr. Thomas played it last season in connection with the introduction, finale, and other portions of the same Act. Wagner’s operatic music always suffers by separation from its proper associations, and the only satisfactory way of arranging it for concert use is to present, as Mr. Thomas usually does, a comprehensive synopsis of an entire Act. It was interesting to compare with these rich and characteristic specimens of the new school three representative overtures by composers who exerted a powerful influence upon the development of Wagner’s genius. To Weber the author of the ‘Kunstwerk der Zukunst’ makes frequent and grateful reference, and it certainly is not difficult to trace a certain similarity of [illegible] between the romanticism of ‘Lohengrin’ and that of ‘Der Freischütz.’ There is less of this resemblance, however, in the overture to Weber’s early operetta of ‘Abu Hassan,’ which Mr. Thomas produced for the first time on Thursday—a charming work which ought not to be laid aside. If Weber was the first to make a deep impression upon Wagner’s youthful mind, Spontini was one of the first to show him the possibilities of musical and dramatic combinations which nobody hitherto had dreamed of. Spontini and Cherubini were foremost among the immediate successors of Gluck in that renovation of the opera which gave such a peculiar glory to the French stage, and it was in the school of which they were the leaders that Wagner took his first practical lessons in the musical drama. ‘Nurmahal’ is not one of Spontini’s masterpieces, but the overture, played on Thursday night, is an admirable specimen of his style, broad, vigorous, compact, and clear—the work of a man who was sure of his ideas and master of his art. In Cherubini’s overture to ‘The Water-carrier,’ played the next night, it is easy to recognize the same polished school, but there is perhaps a little more stiffness in the master whom Adolphe Adam absurdly enough called a ‘moderator,’ sent into the world to restrain the ‘eccentricities’ of the disciples of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. ‘The Water-carrier,’ however (better known by its French title ‘Les deux Journées’), is universally recognized as one of the best productions of a composer and stands midway between ancient and modern musicians.

Hoffmann, whose ‘Hungarian Suite’ we described when it was first performed at a Steinway Hall matinee about a month ago, is one of the most modern of the modern in his orchestration, which is rich and effective in the highest degree. Basing his Suite, as we should judge, on characteristic popular airs, he has given it a tuneful, rhythmic movement which catches the popular ear, while its bright coloring and skillful development of themes will commend it to more critical listeners. It was played twice last week with general applause. Another novelty was a pretty Scherzo entitled ‘A Vision,’ by H. Stiehl; it has all the gentleness of a Revery, with much of the vivacity that appertains to the tempo in which it was written. Gounod’s overture to his comic opera, ‘Le Médecin malgré lui,’ written in 1858, and played for the first time at these concerts on Friday, is a pleasant combination of the spirit of comedy with a certain old-fashioned formality. An overture by Mr. Dudley Buck of Boston was played the same evening. It is taken from an unpublished and unperformed cantata, ‘The Legend of Don Munio,’ founded on one of Washington Irving’s Spanish stories. Mr. Buck writes with grace and elegance. His melodies are pleasing, his scoring is excellent, he attempts nothing for which he is not fully equipped, and the general character of his overture is fresh and cheerful. Among the more or less familiar works performed last week were the whole of Beethoven’s beautiful and too much neglected 2d symphony, Bargiel’s ‘Three German Dances,’ and that curious but delightful freak of Mendelssohn’s, the scherzo from the Reformation Symphony.”