Mason-Thomas Chamber Music Soiree: 6th

      “The last of the series of chamber concerts – so well remembered under the names of Mason and Thomas – will take place at Dodworth’s Hall on Wednesday evening.  The programme is unusually interesting, and we need scarcely add will be interpreted in the usual carefully and artistic way of the party.”

      “Messrs. Mason, Thomas, Mosenthal, Matzka, and Bergner give their last entertainment of chamber music to-night at Dodworth Hall.  The programme is the best of the season.”

      “The early part of the season – nearly the whole of it, in fact – was so given up to balls that there was no chance for concert entrepreneurs.  Hence we are still enjoying – although advanced in May – many excellent musical entertainments.  On Wednesday last the sixth and last soiree of chamber music took place at Dodworth’s Hall, No. 806 Broadway.  These meritorious entertainments have now maintained themselves for ten seasons.  What is even more interesting than this fact is, that of late years they have been actually remunerative.  It is not only in America that chamber music has regained some of its old-time popularity.  Quartette clubs are the rage in Europe.  From all sides we hear of the good they have wrought, and the service they are still doing.  No better mode of studying form – a somewhat intangible thing in music – can be insisted on.  In chamber compositions the framework, although gracefully veiled, is generally apparent.  The attention is interested, the fancy excited, and the judgment stimulated by seeking for this frame-work.  There is room, in a community like ours, for every kind of art-study, and no reason exists why any style of composition should be regarded authoritatively as the best.  It is possible to listen to an opera, a symphony, and a quartette with equal enjoyment.  If this were more often acknowledged there would be a greater demand for classical music.  Nothing but the supreme power of cant has kept the masterpieces of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven so long from the masses.  The most rigidly classical entertainments in the world at this moment are the popular concerts in London.  The admission is but one shilling, (twenty-five cents specie,) and St. James’ Hall, seating twelve hundred people, is crowded every Monday evening.  This result was impossible whilst Cant prevailed.  It was only attained when real talent, guided by real desire to please, took the place of slobbering charlatanism.  Music for many years was there, as it still is here, in the hands of piano-bangers.  The man who could play a fugue by Bach, looked down with lofty scorn upon the man who merely sang an aria by Rossini, and so on to the end.  Piano playing is destructive of taste.  It is a cold, mechanical operation.  But, of one hundred pianoforte players, not five ever think of going to any musical or general entertainment at which, for a moment, they might forget the tedious fact of having four fingers and a thumb on each hand.  Yet the gallant remainder, the invincible ninety-five, will wag their tongues bravely, and express their opinions with a decision that is sometimes startling.  Paris, a few years ago, was the pianopolis of the world, and it quickly became degraded as a musical centre.  It must, inevitably, be the same everywhere.  How great, then, is the necessity for an entertainment that takes us, for a moment, beyond the consideration of mere digital dexterity?  A quartette party, like that of Messrs. Mason and Thomas, will, we trust, be speedily found in every city of the Union, and like it, too, without the prefix of “classical.”  The professors of piano and cant have made the word odious, and Messrs. Mason and Thomas have done wisely to drop it.

      Schubert’s trio in E flat (opus 100) opened the programme.  Nothing can be more agreeable or delicious.  The melodies are fluent and popular, and the treatment ingenious, if not always strict.  Schubert’s imagination led him into strange rambles, and his journeyings were sometimes tedious by reason of their length, but there were flowers on the way, and glimpses of half veiled lands, where poetry yet lingered amid delicate perfumes and calm delights.  The trio is thickly strewn with beauties, and must always give satisfaction.  It was succeeded by one of Beethoven’s extreme quartettes, that in C Sharp minor, opus 131, a work which contains a mine of ideas, but which was composed at a time when the master had ceased to arrange the treasures of his fancy with perspicacity.  It is the fashion of the present day to look upon laxity of form as a certain indication of the taste that will prevail in the future.  Chaos, however, is in the past, and we doubt if our descendants will accept the legacies so liberally bestowed on them.  The quartette is over long, and makes astonishing demands on the executive skills of the performers.  It was, on the whole, well given, although the dampness of the evening made it very difficult to keep the instruments in tune, and so added to a vagueness which was too often apparent.  The third and last item on the programme was Schumann’s piano quintette, in E flat, opus 44, an opulent work, especially in the first and last movements.  The march is regarded with great favor by the admirers of the composer, but it has always impressed us as the weakest number of the set.  The subject is commonplace, and susceptible only of the most obvious treatment.  The scherzo is in a better mood, and the concluding allegro is admirable.  These morceaux were played with marked skill by Messrs. WM. Mason, (piano;) Theo. Thomas, (violin;) J. Mosenthal, (secondo;) G. Matzka, (viola,) and F. Bergner, (violoncello.)  Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, the attendance was good and fashionable.”

    [Preliminary translation]

     Because of Schubert’s poor upbringing, his talent was not sufficiently developed.  Brilliant with his songs, marches and small piano works, he was clearly not educated enough for the larger forms of music.  His work presented at this concert (“Schubert, trio in E-flat, op. 100”) demonstrated that.  It is filled with original ideas yet lacks a unifying form.

     Beethoven’s work is brilliant.  We would have preferred to hear the entire quartet, though.

     Schumann’s only piano quintet was excellently performed and is clearly one of the most beautiful and poetic blooms of his big talent.

     We would like to express our gratitude to all the good artists, Thomas, Bergner, Matzka, Mosenthal and Mason for their contribution to this winter season.  They were the best sacrifice that was offered on the altar of the arts.