Louis Dachauer Annual Concert

“The audience that attended this artist’s concert on Tuesday night was the most fashionable one we have seen in Dodworth Hall.  Senorita Carmelina Poch sang the bolero from the Sicilian Vespers worse than ever we heard her before.  Her voice and method were forced and spasmodic, and produced a disagreeable impression on her hearers.  She has naturally a good, well trained voice, but she sometimes uses it injudiciously.  She was better in the little Spanish song that followed the inevitable encore.  The trio from Attila, which was substituted for the quartet from Don Pasquale, was deficient only in the bass. Signor Remi sang that part in a harsh, disagreeable voice, which completely marred the tenor of Signor Tamaro and Senorita Poch’s soprano. Madamoiselle G. Gomien, another of our good American contraltos, sang the cavatina from Mercadante’s Donna Caritea very well. An eight-hand arrangement for two pianos of Liszt’s Rakozy [sic] March, and an Allegro by Ascher, were splendidly played by Messrs. Dachauer, Pecher, Lejeal and Eick. The custom of changing the pieces on the programmes of many of the concerts has become a nuisance of late. If the director of a concert makes out a certain bill and distributes printed copies of it to the audience he ought not certainly change any portion of it from mere caprice. It is no sufficient reason that one of the artists forgot to bring his copy of the music, or that another immediately before his or her part didn’t care for singing what was set down on the bill.  The audience might as well have no programme furnished them under this system. If sickness or some sufficient excuse necessitates a change of pieces it would be only an act of courtesy due to his patrons for the director of a concert to apologize and explain the change to them.”