With the month of February comes our musical season-the season
appropriated to the fashionable concerts and other entertainments. There have been two such concerts this week, both at the Hanover Square Rooms ; Madame Pleyel'a on Monday, and Mr. Sterndale Bennett's on Tuesday evenings. The artists being both pianists of the highest class, their concerts were made up chiefly of similar materials ; solo and con- certed pianoforte pieces of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, interspersed, by Madame Pleyel, with some of the brilliant fantasias of Thalberg and Liszt. Madame Pleyel deserves her European celebrity : her fire and brilliancy are probably unrivalled, but she is more happy, we think, in the florid and ornate pieces of the day than in the severer style of the classical school. In Beethoven's sonatas, either solo or accompanied, exquisitely as she often plays, she is apt to think of her own display more than of a pure reading of the text : she puts in too much of her own- accelerations and retardations not indicated by the author, exaggerated " tempo rubato," and even alterations in the passages, which disturb the impressions of those who are well acquainted with the music. Mr. Bennett has neither Madame Pleyel's finger nor her fire. He is, indeed, somewhat deficient in warmth ; but he has no lack of execution, and his interpretation of his author is always intelligent, clear, and satisfactory. On both evenings the pianists had the masterly accompaniments of Saint= and Piatti. There was a little vocal music, but of a trifling kind, and apparently stuck in pour passer le temps.
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