AT THE DRESDEN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1189, 14 December 1894, Page 32

AT THE DRESDEN.

Miss Medley and Mr Alfred Hill, with the assistance of some good musicians, gave a well-selected programme of chamber music on Saturday evening. The event of their concert was the introduction of Grieg’s sonata for violin and piano for the first time to a Wellington audience. It is a composition of the first force in that composer’s most characteristic style. The chief work is for the piano,displaying the resources of that instrument in a truly marvellous manner, calling upon the best qualities of the executant, requiring the utmost delicacy and grace, and exacting at the same time the most solid powers. The violin part is delightful. The two instruments between them present a beautiful musical poem, ideal, dreamy, lefined, working up into passages of emotional intensity with effects of great brilliancy and power. The performance was in every way adequate. Miss Medley was at her best, with her usual , Jightness and clearness of finger, completeness of artistic style, vigorous energy and uncommonly solid power; and Mr Hill’s fine tone and masterly skill were vei*y remarkable. Miss Medley’s other number was a bracket — Wollenhaupt’s “La StyriennG,” and Schumann’s “ Vogelal’s Prophet,” both of which she played with great daintiness and finish, receiving considerable applause. A handsome bouquet of roses was presented to her as she was bowing her acknowledgments, and a beautiful porcelain vase. Mr Hill’s solo contribution was Bach’s air on the G string, given with fine breadth of tone, accompanied by strings played with commendable lightness by Miss Kennedy, Miss Hirchsberg and Miss Holt. Mr Prouse contributed three' songs; Gounod’s “ Medje ” in his manliest most finished manner, a new song of Mr Hill’s, “My Fairest Child ” —an ambitious effort of composition, which taxed his best powers to the utmost, and showed that Mr Hill is an industrious and promising composer —and a flowing love song, flowingly sung. Miss Mabel Hill gave a.feeling-rendering of Kellie’s graceful song “ She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways,” and Miss Bell, of Christchurch, sang Mascagni’s “ Avo Maria ” with tuneful reverence. A trio for violins (Mr Hill, Miss Kennedy and Miss Hirscliberg) and the first movement of Haydn’s string Quartet No. 6 (Mr Hill, Miss Kennedy, Miss Hirscliberg and Miss Holt), both brightly played, were taking features of the programme. Miss Williams accompanied all the songs with one exception (Mr Hill’s composition) in her usual perfect style. The audience, which comprised His Excellency the Governor and a party from Government House, was not, we regret to say, as large as the concert deserved. Chamber music does not of course appeal to large audiences. But it should be a frequent feature in the music of the city. In other places it is kept up by the subscription system, and we remember a delightful series of concerts last year which was due to that system. Can that system not be applied to concerts similar to last Saturday’s? We are sure that it can, and suggest that an organised attempt be made with that object.