This was a pleasure, indeed. A Symphony by Mozart, the enchanting Midsummer’s Night Dream, and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, all in one evening! Yet it was not too good; we felt no want of alloy to make the gold pass current, and saw in the audience no symptoms of that necessity for consulting their (bad) taste, on which the directors of concerts usually count.
The Pastoral Symphony which has not, for a long time, if at all, been performed here, was received with rapture, even by those not fitted by constitution to feel the full force of Beethoven’s peculiar genius. It has, indeed, less of what is peculiar to him than almost any other of his great compositions. It has a richness and full stream from the fount of Ideas, with which no other artist can vie, but not those deep inspirations which require that the mind of the hearer should in like manner transcend customary limits to apprehend their scope. It is clear, bright, wining, enchanting; nothing but stupidity could resist it.
The great concert is to take place of the 20th May.*
“Philharmonic Concert,” New-York Daily Tribune, 28 April 1846, p. 2.
