Midsummer finds us in the very height of the concerts.
They occur daily, and sometimes two or three in a day. To notice, or even record them in a journal not specially appropriated to music, would be out of the question; and besides, there are very few of them which have any feature of novelty or interest. In general they present a round of the same pieces, sung or played by the same performers, till by the end of the season they are thoroughly threadbare.
During the last two weeks there have been many concerts, but very few worth notice. Ella has carried on his " Musical Union " this season with great success. Its last meeting, on the 12th, was remarkable for the per- formance of one of Beethoven's mysterious posthumous quartets, that in B flat—for the light thrown upon it by the players. Ernst, Deloffre, Hill, and Piatti, and for the attention and pleasure with which a large and fashion- able audience listened to it. Mr. Osborne, the pianist, who has long held a high place among the celebrites of Paris, and is now settled among us, had a concert on the 14th; distinguished not only by his own masterly performance, but by the classical character of the selection. A sestet of his own, for the pianoforte principal, reminded us of the pure and symme- trical style of Mozart. On the 15th, Madame Daleken had a concert in Her Majesty's Theatre, of monster dimensions, a gathering of almost every noted singer and player in London. The novelty was the appearance of Apollinaire de Kontski, a violinist of the Paganini school, and hardly infe- rior to Paganini himself in marvels of execution: but this species of excel- lence has sunk to its true value among amateurs of the violin. At Jul- lien's " concert monstre," also on the 15th, a selection from Meyerbeer's Prophets was produced, in spite of an earnest remonstrance not only from the Covent Garden directors, but from Meyerbeer himself: an intimation from Meyerbeer has since appeared in the daily papers, that the music (which is not yet published) had not been obtained directly or indirectly from him.
Among the concerts of this week, have been those of Maximilian Bohrer, an excellent violoncellist of the Romberg school; of Madame Claire Hennelle, the vocalist; and of M. Benedict—this last a monster concert, similar to Madame Dulcken's.
This week also, Mr. John Hanel has marshalled the pupils of his upper singing classes in an Exeter Hall performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah; the Prophet by Pisohek. The army of volunteers displayed in the dif- ficult passages and delicate shades of the music that surprising discipline to which Mr. Hullah has brought them: they sing not only with an ac- curacy very surprising in such a large body—doubly surprising when we consider the heterogeneous elements—but also with a tasteful appreciation of his guidance, which shows how much they must like their master and understand his teaching.
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