Jerome Hopkins Apres-Midi Concert: 4th

“Mr. C. JEROME HOPKINS’ matinée on Wednesday last—so far as attendance was concerned—a success. The gentleman is, we believe, doing good service in the cause of art. He is industrious, energetic and irrepressible. He has educated several hundred boys, and is still persevering in the good work. For this let us give him all thanks. But why does he come before the public as a piano-forte player? He ought to know that tiddling at the top of a piano and dabbing at the bottom of it does not constitute playing. It is at all events our duty to tell him so. His own pieces are profuse in mediocrity, and he plays them with unkind liberality. The instrumental feature of the concert was Mr. Hopkins’ arrangement for three pianos of the march from the ‘African.’ We have rarely listened to a piece so crude and rudimentary. Liszt has recently taken the same subject and he provides for two hands more than Mr. Hopkins has furnished for six. The performance was simply ludicrous. Mrs. Brinkerhoff was the soprano of the occasion, and to her efforts we ascribe the only enjoyment that we experienced. She sang with intelligence and feeling, thereby redeeming a concert of utter insignificance. The ‘Nation’s Hymn’ by the lady is a square and tuneful piece. It was wretchedly rendered both by Mr. Rudolph and the Orpheonists; but its pleasing melody made it acceptable to the audience.”

“Mr. Hopkins’s last but one Apres-Midi concert was brilliantly attended, Wallack’s Theater being crowded with crinoline, dotted by broadcloth.  Mr. Hopkins played several of his own compositions and arrangements, and we are pleased to note the marked improvement both in the method and manner of his performance. He has considerable execution and much sentiment, but he has hitherto lacked the nerve to do justice to these qualifications. This he is rapidly acquiring, and we have no doubt that he will, by his indomitable perseverance, win for himself a prominent position in his art. His compositions also give evidence of greater care, a stricter adherence to acknowledged forms and a clearer melodic inspiration.  He possesses taste and imagination, and a certain graceful turn of thought, but his fancy is fitful, his ideas lack consecutive aptness, that quality of balance without which thoughts are prodigally spent, which might have been worked up into rounded perfection.  If Mr. Hopkins could spare a couple of years from his busy and useful life, to place himself, away from all the associations of his past career, under the supervision of a matured and leading mind, he would develop the fine talents, which he assuredly possesses, more fully in that brief period than, otherwise, in his whole lifetime.”