• CITY AMATEUR CONCERTS.
THIS series of concerts began on Thursday, and the commence- ment was such as to give every promise of a successful season. To speak first of the audience—the room was crowded. The band was excellent: among them we observed Mom (the leader), LINDLEY, DRAGONETTI, NICHOLSON, WAGSTAFF, PLATT, HAR- PER, &c.—in short, every point was well strengthened. The singers were Madame STOCKHAUSEN, Miss GRANT, Monsieur RE- GREZ, and Messrs. E. TAYLOR and PHILLIPS. In this important department, these concerts exceed the Philharmonic. Their ab- surd custom of invariably limiting their vocal engagements to three, must, necessarily, circumscribe the choice of their music within very narrow limits, and completely exclude those pieces which form the most attractive features of the City Concerts,— such, for instance, as the finale to the first act of RMatrimonio Se- greto,which we heard with greatpleasure on Thursday night. In the course of last season; we believe, we censured the bad taste of placing HANDEL'S sacred songs in the midst of modern Italian music; and we are surprised that a man of FORBES'S experience and judgment should repeat the error. PHILLIPS launched a new German drinking-song, or rather sang the upperline of the drink- ing-glee in the Vampyr to German words. We cannot admire the alteration; a man might as well turn "How merrily we live" into a song. The greatest treat of the evening was one of HANDEL'S instrumental trios (erroneously ascribed to MARTINI in the bills), by MORI, .LINDLEY, and DRAGONETTI. It was enthusiastically :encored. We again recommend the Directors of these Concerts not to be guilty of the absurd affectation of excluding English music from their schemes. If only for the sake of variety, let us be delivered. from an eternal roiind of the same Italian pieces. As the conductor enforces the almost obsolete custom of rehears- ing what is to he performed, there is no excuse for putting up with a succession of songs and duets which we are sure to hear at almost every benefit concert during the-season.-
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