Bateman and Harrison Wednesday Popular Concert: 5th

"Wednesday Popular Concert.--The fourth [sic] Wednesday popular concert of the admirable series undertaken by Messrs. Bateman and Harrison, will be given at Steinway Hall. The soloists are, Mr. Julius Eichberg and Mr. W.J. Hill, (tenor.) The orchestral features under the direction of Mr. Theodore Thomas are very interesting.

"FOURTH [sic] WEDNESDAY CONCERT.

The fourth [sic] of the popular Wednesday concerts given at Steinway Hall, will occur this evening. Mr. Julius Eichberg makes his second appearance here as a violinist. Mr. W.J. Hill and Mr. G.W. Colby will assist. Mr. Theodore Thomas will furnish the orchestral music."

“The programme of the popular concert at Steinway Hall last evening was very interesting. The orchestra played, the overture to Stradella, the second movement of Beethoven’s second symphony, scene and ballet from Robert le Diable, selections from Ione, the Amelia Waltz, by Lumbye, and the Artists’s Quadrille, by Strauss. Mr. Julius Eichberg played a violin fantasie of his own in [sic] themes from L’Elisir d’Amore, and La Pavane, a dance of the seventeenth century, and Mr. W. J. Hill sang ‘Good Bye, Sweetheart,’ Abt’s Schlapen wohl, and the Marseillaise. The German waltz ought to be on every programme of those popular concerts. Lumbye, Lanner, Strauss, Gung’l and a score of others have left us some of the most charming examples of this kind of music. Their waltzes are not the unmeaning ‘tum-tum-tum’ which strangers to them associate with the idea of a waltz, but are tone pictures, full of variety and sentiment. Melody after melody glide [sic] into each other, revealing every moment new charms and new ideas. And as the measures flash by at each wave of the conductor’s baton, many a fair head and tiny foot among the audience nod and pat in time, and those glimpses of fairyland which the magic triod [sic], Liederkranz, Arion, and Putim [sic], show us each year, gladden and brighten the eyes of the fair listeners in the hall. In the Artist’s quadrille all the great composers throng to the levée of the genial Strauss. Mendelssohn justles [sic] against Beethoven; Weber is rudely pushed out of the way by Mozart, and the operatic composers of every age form the sets. There was nothing in Mr. Eichberg’s playing last evening to warrant a different opinion from that already expressed on Sunday night. The fantasia is a meritorious work; but if La Pavane is a specimen of the music of the seventeenth century, then we sincerely pity those who went to the halls A.D. 16—. It would do very well for a graveyard soirée, but for our ideas of dancing it is lugubrious in the extreme. Mr. Hill sang admirably, and received an enthusiastic encore.”

“The concert given at Steinway Hall last evening was well attended, and worthy of still larger attendance, although hardly equal to that given last Sunday evening. The performances of the orchestra, under the leadership of Mr. Theodore Thomas, were satisfactory, but not quite up to the usual high standard it has so well maintained. Mr. Julius Eichberg made his second appearance before our public, and was even more favorably received than at the Sunday concert. Mr. Eichberg’s style of playing is not calculated to produce a sensation among the majority of concert-goers, who especially admire astonishing feats of execution, but it is extremely pleasing to cultivated persons who are capable of appreciating a refined, delicate, and spiritual rendering of the highest class of compositions. He never obtrudes his skill, but modestly and with the spirit of a genuine artist interprets the composer’s sentiment in such a manner as to give one a new sense of appreciation. We have an abundance of the ‘force’ school of of [sic] violinists. We would there were more like Mr. Eichberg.”