Central Park Garden Concert

Includes program. 

Letter to the editor from “W. W. R.” defending the classical programs of the Thomas concerts.

“Thursday night being the special occasion of the week at the Central Park Garden for a programme of unusual interest, it was not surprising to find the charming metropolitan summer resort crowded with an assemblage to which the term fashionable may be fitly applied. A glance at the bill will show what a rare feast of music was prepared for the occasion [see above].

Passing over the blatant production of the crazy abbé, we have nothing but terms of praise for Arthur Sullivan’s beautiful work, a most scholarly and artistic piece of workmanship. Mr. Thomas should, in view of the success attending the production of this introduction to Shakespeare’s fantastic creation, give more extracts from the works of the eminent English composers. Sullivan, Bennett, Benedict and a half dozen other names might be cited as worthy sources from which to draw materials for a programme. Riemenschneider, we understand, is a very young composer, and, judging from his symphonic poem, a very ambitious one, too. Yet he seems to be so thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of the Zukunft school, without the inspiration or experience necessary to put his crude ideas in palatable shape, that, in our opinion, less mistaken ambition and more naturalness would be of service to Mr. Riemenschnieder. A large number of the patrons of the Central Park Garden concerts call earnestly for operatic ensembles, like the quintet from ‘Ernani,’ the sextet, ‘Lucia,’ the quartet, ‘Rigoletto,’ &c., to be placed on the bills more frequently. A sprinkling of such music would serve to relieve the fatigued mind from an hour with Wagner, Max Bruch or Liszt.”