498 THE MUSICIAN ABOUT TOWN. 
year the Hanover Square rooms have been proportionately occupied. 
This circumstance is a favourable indication of the advance that 
sterling music is making in England ; for such has essentially been 
the class of composition performed at these concerts. We have had 
the quartetts of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; the quintetts of 
Onslow, the double quartett and nonetto of Spohr ; interspersed 
with trios of Corelli, and a fugue of Sebastian Bach, arranged for 
piano-forte and double bass; Dragonetti taking the pedale. This 
last piece, by the way (the prelude and fugue in = minor), was not 
played in the satisfactory manner we could have wished. Mr. Be- 
nedict at the piano forte was too loud and hurried, predominating 
over and clouding the masterly light and shade of Dragonetti’s per- 
formance. Mr. Benedict is evidently not intimate with the style of 
that old music: but subsequently, and during the same concert, he 
and Mr. Schulz played Mozart’s magnificent concertante in p for 
two pianos. Both instruments and performers were nicely balanced 
—Benedict has the more powerful finger ; but Schulz’s reading of 
the slow movement was exquisitely refined and polished. This, with 
the very masterly execution of Mori, in the slow movement to the 
double quartett, which contains passages of excessive difficulty, were, 
according to our recollection, the most attractive features of the se- 
ries ; the vocal department, but so so; excepting, however, Miss 
Masson’s animated and excellent reading of Haydn’s magnificently 
conceived cantata, “‘ Ariana a Naxos ;” his very finest specimen of 
dramatic composition. From the success that has attended Mr. 
Mori’s exertions this season, it is clear what his energy and activity 
will lead him to accomplish next year. 
Another feature of the musical times is the success of Mr. Mos- 
cheles. A series of performances, consisting principally of piano 
forte compositions, and all of them played by the same artist, would 
have been received, only a few years ago, with utter indifference. 
Now we witness a numerous company listening with evident grati- 
fication to the fugues and lessons of Scarlatti, the sonatas of Mo- 
zart, Beethoven, &c. Some of the most accomplished of Mr. Mos- 
cheles’ playing has been in the harpsichord lessons of Scarlatti; in 
which a thorough acquaintance with the author’s style, and a per- 
fectly free and neat execution, were equally conspicuous: and his 
most extraordinary performances for force and brilliancy, were, a 
selection from his ‘“ Characteristic Studies,” among which the one 
entitled “Terpsichore” (a furiously difficult movement, and in strict 
keeping and character with its title) ; also a “Galop chromatique,” 
by Liszt, which Mr. Moscheles, it is to be presumed, selected to 
