Central Park Garden Concert

Includes program. 

“The sultry weather has the effect of crowding this favorite metropolitan summer resort every evening, by the admirers of the incomparable orchestra engaged there. Tuesday night the crowd was, if possible, greater than ever, the selections of Mr. Thomas going from Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Weber, Bach, Gounod, Schubert, Strauss, Keler Bela, Zellner and Pfiefke, a goodly array of musical celebrities. A prelude and fugue of the grand old Bach, adapted for orchestra, gave quite a novel idea of the quaint, yet genial and polyphonic music which we have been hitherto accustomed to hear only on the organ and piano. How the fugue theme, in all its lusty, robust strength, was carried through in its entirety, with an interlacing, so to speak, of all the instruments, the strings bringing out, with not only the clockwork precision of a Rubinstein’s fingers, but with a degree of expression as in a meditation of Gounod, the subject in bold relief, while strange tints of color lighted it up from the other departments of the orchestra can hardly be told to do justice to the effect. The domain of solo instrumental music has been invaded by Mr. Thomas’ band, with such results that many of the favorites of the concert room, notably Liszt’s ‘Rhapsodie Hongroise No. 2,’ Vieuxtemps’ ‘Fantasie Caprice,’ and this Bach’s ‘Fugue,’ will for the future present a feeble effect in the hands of any single artist.”