FIFTH CONCERT, Monday, April 29, 1833.

ACT I.

ACT II.

Spohr’s symphony in E flat is richer in melody and more free from that complication which smells so much of the lamp—from that labour which fatigues the hearer as much as it did the composer, than any one of his instrumental works. His designs are here clearly expressed and readily understood, and we listen to the whole with pleasure, without feeling that any part of it has been too long. It was most accurately performed, as was also Beethoven’s, in D, one of his clearest and most beautiful orchestral productions, sparkling with genius from beginning to end. The calmly grand opening induces us to hope for much, nevertheless the exquisite larghetto surpasses all that had been anticipated. Nor are the scherzo and trio less striking in another style. The overture to the FreischÜtz went off admirably. The last, Winter’s, we did not hear.

Mr. Wright played Hummel’s celebrated piano-forte concerto in E, arranged for the harp, and executed it in an able manner. Herr Knoop comes from the city of our queen, Meiningen, and was recommended to the notice of the society by his majesty. To do extraordinary things seems to be the object of his ambition, and that to which his labours have chiefly been directed; he therefore can run thirds and octaves with vast celerity and neatness, and play with his left hand close to the bridge, bringing out sounds too high for even a rational violinist to attempt. But this is to please, or at least to surprise, the mob of gentlemen who hear but cannot judge. His tone, the first consideration, is nasal in what we call the legitimate notes of the instrument, and hard in the highest. His taste is not bad, but he has very little of it; and in expression, the vivifying principle of music, he is quite deficient. In short, execution appears to be the god of his idolatry, at whose altar he has sacrificed—if we may judge from a single hearing—nearly all that we consider valuable in the art. The composition he played has been extolled: in our opinion it has very little merit, except of a negative kind. We, however, were very glad to hear him; so we believe were all present, for he was new; and moreover, he has not thrown our own Lindley into shade, but, on the contrary, taught us to value him more highly.

The vocal part of this concert did not prove very successful. Mr. Parry, jun. sang Mozart’s aria very well, but it did not excite much interest. The duet of Mayer has not strength enough for these concerts, and Mr. Braham was not in good voice, the influenza had just commenced an attack on him, by which he was afterwards confined. This state of health of course operated in the scena of Beethoven, much of which, we may also add, is hardly vocal, especially the cacophonous run of semitones. The company were so exhausted by the unreasonable length of Herr Knoop’s concerto, that they left Mrs. Wood to sing the fine scena from Faust to few more than the orchestra by which she was accompanied. Upon the whole, then, it must be confessed that the present performance was not of the most brilliant kind.

SIXTH CONCERT, Monday, May 13, 1833.

ACT I.

ACT II.

Whatever defects were apparent in the fifth Concert, were fully atoned for by the sixth, in which the most fastidious critic could find only one piece of a doubtful kind, and but one that was not performed in a perfect manner.

Haydn’s symphony, in D, is too generally known and admired to need any remark. M. Mendelssohn’s, composed in pursuance of a resolution of this Society, by which he was requested to write a symphony, overture, and vocal piece, on liberal terms, is a composition that will endure for ages, if we may presume to judge such a work on a single performance. The first movement, an allegro vivace, in A, without any slow opening, speaks at once the highly excited state of the author’s imagination, and the fine flow of his animal spirits, when he wrote it: so full of brilliant conceptions is this, and so rapid their succession, that it would be a hopeless attempt to analyse it without either having heard it several times, or having the score to refer to. We may say the same of the finale, which has this peculiarity—that it is in the minor of the key in which the symphony commences. The slow movement in D minor is not less distinguished by ingenuity of a very rare description, and beauty of the most discernible kind, than by its undisputed, unquestionable originality: this was loudly encored. The scherzo, in A, and trio, in E, shew genius of a high order in every bar. And, to be brief, the manner in which the whole work was received, by the most critical, the best qualified audience that London (now full of eminent foreign musicians) could assemble, bears us out in what we have said, and would justify us were we to add still more in praise of this masterly production.

The Overture by M. Pixis, now performed for the first time here, begins in a promising manner, with some good harmony, well distributed among the wind instruments; but as it proceeds, it falls off most lamentably, and the greater part of the composition is nothing but noise without design or order, and really seemed to us as if written for that fair which is annually held on the site of Smithfield market.

The performance of Mozart’s Concerto by M. Mendelssohn was perfect. The scrupulous exactness with which he gave the author’s text, without a single addition or new reading of his own, the precision in his time, together with the extraordinary accuracy of his execution, excited the admiration of all present; and this was increased, almost to rapture, by his two extemporaneous cadences, in which he adverted with great address to the subjects of the concerto, and wrought up his audience almost to the same pitch of enthusiasm which he himself had arrived at. The whole of this concerto he played from memory.

A not less admirable performance was M. De Beriot’s on the violin. As a composition, his concerto, in B minor, is entitled to high and unqualified praise; his subjects are new, pleasing, and skilfully treated, and his instrumentation, the orchestral parts of his work, prove him to be a most able musician: but his execution of this indeed ‘beggars description.’ Words cannot convey a just notion of the fulness and beauty of his tone, the certainty of his double, his triple, stops, the truth of his harmonics,—which, useless as they are, he introduced, we conclude, merely to show his power—the brilliancy of his execution, and the delicacy of his taste. We certainly never heard the violin so played, and the only fault we have to find with M. de Beriot is, that he condescended to introduce once, it not twice, certain pizzicato notes, and thus seemed to sanction a piece of quackery which he must despise. The room rung with the plaudits he drew forth, and it is said to be the intention of the directors to engage M. de Beriot for the eighth concert, being the last.

Signor Rubini refrained, as much as with him is possible, from roulades in the aria of Mozart, and his alternations of fortissimo and pianissimo were more moderate; indeed, he pretty nearly equalized his tones; but this is the only commendation we can bestow on his performance of ‘O Cara Immagine.’ In his duet with Mad. Cinti, his passionate style told better; and here again he spared us those bursts by which he caricatures so much of what is assigned to him. Mad. Cinti was delightful in the aria from Figaro. A universal encore of this proved how completely she had charmed her audience. She was not less excellent in the air of Meyerbeer, though this did not tell so well as the other. In fact the concert was long, and many people were moving off to evening parties.