8 FEBRUARY 1851, Page 12

The Amateur Musical Society has entered upon its fifth Season,

and its usefulness as a means of promoting sound knowledge and good taste among the upper classes is increasing every year. Its peculiar object is the cultivation of orchestral music ; and it has formed a great orchestra, complete in every part, and becoming every year more competent to grapple with the most arduous works of Mozart, Beethoven Spohr, and MendeLssohn. This band consists of amateurs, with a sprinkling of professors for some of the most responsible duties. A duke plays the double-bass, and plays it admirably ; one of his sons handles the violoncello like a lasster; an earl is one of the best of the violins ; the second trumpet is, we believe, a nobleman ; the lid of the performers, in short, blazes with aristocratic names and titles. All this surely does not sanction the common reproach that it is among this class of society that the taste in music is the most frivolous and depraved. When wo see the pains bestowed by the members of this Society on the study and practice of such severe and lofty music, we may safely infer that music of an equally high character is cultivated in their social and domestic circles. _ At the first concert of the season, at the Hanover Square Rooms oti Monday evening, the Society performed Beethoven's Symphony in C minor—the grandest orchestral work in existence—if not with the nice precision of the Philharmonic, yet with a great deal of fire and vigour, a warmth of feeling with which the listener could not fail to sympath4s, and an accuracy of execution sufficient to give pleasure to ears not motbidly fastidious. In the same manner they played Weber's Overture to Oberon and Mendelssohn's Wedding-March. The prevailing faults were the want of sufficiently subdued pianos, and the overpowering loudness of some of the brass instruments ; for which last, by the way, the professional players were chiefly responsible. The only objectionable part played on wind-instruments ; a vulgar ear-trap, worthy only of Monsieur of the concert was the selection from Robert lc _Diable with the voice parts Jullien or the managers of the National Concerts,

Signor Negri, as the conductor of an amateur orchestra, has a difficult task, but he performs it with ability and success.