142 THE MUSICIAN ABOUT TOWN. 



expressly for the Diisseldorf Festival, and was to have had the " Al- 

 ceste" got up on the third day for her ; but, owing to the non-arrival 

 of the music, the plan was relinquished, much to our regret, as we 

 would fain have heard this singer in her own peculiar style. She is 

 a remarkably fine woman, with delicate features, and a profusion of 

 hair, which she wears in long curls dropping down her cheeks. 



The choruses best performed were, " Worthy is the Lamb," the 

 " Hallelujah," and " All we like sheep ;" but, partiality out of the 

 questioij, the vocal band were not equal to that at Exeter Hall for 

 union, energy, and precision. 



Second Performance, — Evening. The Symphonia Eroica of 

 Beethoven opened the concert. In the first movement the violoncel- 

 los were not sufficiently powerful. There was a want of finish in the 

 sudden, pianos ; and the passages of delicacy were deficient in brilli- 

 ancy. Moreover, the violins wanted clearness ; and the slow move- 

 ment was deficient in smoothness and singing in the instruments. 

 The minuet went remarkably well ; but the passage for wind instru- 

 ments in the trio as badly as that passage almost uniformly does. 

 The ftnale, which was lamentably indistinct, was the worst executed 

 of all the movements. 



Beethoven's mass in c, which succeeded, was nicely performed ; 

 the choruses stole in with a delightful piano in the " Kyrie ;" but it 

 is needless to say that Herr JuHus Rietz, who was conductor upon 

 this occasion, is not a Mendelssohn. As a composer too, he is not to 

 our taste: an overture of his, which came after the Beethoven's 

 mass was tremendously noisy, with running passages for the brass in- 

 struments. The subject of the second movement, the allegro, was 

 an imitation of Spohr. Then came Mendelssohn's glorious psalm 

 " As pants the hart," excellently performed as regards the choruses ; 

 but this school of music is so totally out of Passman's style, that in 

 our opinion she completely spoiled it. It was on the third evening 

 that we heard this celebrated singer to advantage. The first notes 

 she uttered of Mozart's fine duet, " Fuggi crudele," showed us at 

 once that the dramatic, and not the sacred, is her forte. She after- 

 wards sang a recitative and air from Gluck's " Iphigenia," which is 

 considered as her greatest efibrt; and undoubtedly she delivers it 

 with efi*ective dignity ; and had she a better quality of voice, which is 

 somewhat reedy, and wholly without flexibility, she would have ren- 

 dered complete justice to this admirable composition. 



Upon this occasion too, Clara Novello's varied powers were more 

 fully developed to the people of Diisseldorf ; as at the same concert 



