i15 
THE MUSICIAN ABOUT TOWN. 
When our last number went to press, the Philharmonic Society 
had not completed their series of concerts for the season. The 
eighth and last took place on the 17th of June, when Beethoven’s 
symphony in B flat and Mendelssohn’s M.S. symphony in A were 
performed. The band being more intimate with the former, it went 
off with satisfactory steadiness and precision ; but both the band 
and audience have yet to make themselves acquainted with the 
poetry as well as the mechanical intention of Mendelssohn’s music. 
The players are too easily satisfied with expressing the mere phrases 
(which a steam engine might be made to accomplish with equal 
certainty), and the majority of the audience, (for obvious reasons) 
are accustomed to judge of an author’s composition by the manner 
in which it is performed. Such a course would be thought prepos- 
terous enough in the reader and auditor of an ode from Milton, or a 
play of Shakspeare’s; and vet neither of these demand more nicety 
or exquisiteness in denoting the shades of tones in the enunciation, 
than are required to give a just expression to such a symphony as 
that of Mendelssohn’s in A, which is distinguished by a placid and 
refined elegance of character, more especially in the andante—a 
lovely and old-fashioned melody, that might be supposed to have 
accompanied some plaintive legend; and in the finale, which is 
instinct with fanciful and brilliant thought; while in its orches- 
tral treatment we trace the varied resources of a great master of 
combination. In nothing is Mendelssohn more distinguished than 
by his intuitive knowledge of the genius and capabilities of every 
instrument in the orchestra, and, above all, in combining them. 
A charming example of this faculty may be noted in the accompa- 
niment to the celestial voices in the “ Paul,” and which is confined 
exclusively to the flutes, clarionets, bassoons, horns, and trombones, 
while the stringed instruments alone accompany the intermediate 
recitative of “Paul.” Nothing can be in finer taste than the effect 
produced by the contrast in the above movement. This may truly 
be called the poetry of instrumentation. 
At the same concert Mr. Sterndale Bennett performed his new 
piano-forte concerto in F minor. Well grounded in the highest 
principles of his art, and with a bias, both native and cultivated, 
towards the classical and the beautiful, this young composer has 
already laid claim to the confident and rational anticipations of his 
VOL. IX., NO. XXV; 15 
