In the same concert played Mademoiselle Josephine Eder, from Vienna, a young pianist of great talent and skill.
Madame Schechner Waagen, whose absence we had to regret during the space of four years, reappeared on our boards in Gluck’s Iphigenia. Her voice does not possess the power it had six years ago, but it is quite the same as we found it in 1829, when a particular change took place in its quality, and it gained in gracefulness what it lost in point of strength. This lady has since made her appearance in the part of Fidelio: the effect, particularly in the second act, was truly overwhelming.
It is a long time since we have seen an audience wrapt in such enthusiasm.
PRAGUE.
IN Demlle. Josephine Eder, a young pianist from Vienna, whose concert was attended by a numerous and highly respectable audience, we found a youthful talent of superior order; and we have every reason to confirm the report which had preceded her, as regards the brilliant hopes for the future, which the high degree of her present cultivation is fully calculated to justify.
Demlle. Eder played a pianoforte concerto by Thalberg; and at the conclusion of the concert, variations by Franz Stadler upon a theme from the opera Die Braut, (La Fiancée,) and showed nut only a great sureness in conquering difficult passages, which however were not too frequent in either of these compositions, but still more an ease, mellowness, precision, and expression, united to pure feeling and refined taste, which even now entitle her to a distinguished place among competitors of a more advanced age. The fact of this young lady’s coming from Vienna might almost have been inferred, by her selecting the overture from Fidelio, by Beethoven.
With us Auber, Bellini, and Lindpainter, are now the order of the day. Bernhard Romberg has again visited us, and furnished to our musical public three very agreeable evenings by his unequalled skill; a circumstance the more welcome, as our Opera, in consequence of the indisposition of Mde. Podhorsky and Mr. Drake, is in a state of utter depression, and reduced to the representation of the most miserable farces and trash.
Mr. Romberg played in his first concert a concertino for the violoncello in G minor, written in his usual pleasant and cheerful style; and at the conclusion, the Masked Ball, a humorous piece for the violoncello. In his second concert Mr. Romberg again treated us with a couple of his newest compositions, viz. a second new concertino; and at the close of the evening a fantasia upon Norwegian rural national airs, which, however attractive, do not equal his Polish and Swedish national melodies.
BRESLAU.
OUR music-director, Mr. Mosevins, whose influence on the taste of the public, and especially of the singers of our city, is universally and gratefully acknowledged, has gained a fresh claim on our thanks by the production of Handel’s oratorio of Samson, on the eve of Palm Sunday, in which the vocal solo pieces, as well as the choruses, were chiefly performed by amateurs; the execution showed a careful and zealous rehearsal, and was received with universal satisfaction. In the Passion week we had abundance of musical performances. On Ash Wednesday, Graun’s Versöhnungslerden Christi, (the Redeeming Sufferings of Christ,) under the direction of Mr. Siegert; on Holy Thursday, Haydn’s Creation; on Good Friday, Graun’s Tod Jesu (the Death of Jesus); all these performances, however, were more or less deteriorated by the prevailing epidemic, the influenza. A variety of obligato cough accompaniments between the songs were, alas! too prevalent. Of our theatre we have but little to report. Herold’s Zampa was received with approbation. Meyerbeer’s Robert the Devil did not meet with success. Madame Piehl is, since the departure of Demlle. Wüst, our first and last singer. In the Autumn the meeting of natural philosophers to be held here is to derive additional interest by a musical festival, at which Handel’s Jephtha, and several vocal compositions of Spohr, Mozart, Hesse, and other eminent masters, are to be produced.