The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-15 00:00:00

with a proportionate increase of confidence. The p a rt assigned to her on this occasion, too, is singu larly well adapted to her great tragic powers. Any thing mere real, more painfully soul-stirring than her r epresentation in the Ist scene of Ist act of D onn a Anna's anguish on discovering the dead body of her father cannot well be imagined. Her shrieks of " Padre mio ! ram taro padre !" were quite over whelming with the depth and intensity of the grief f r om which they apparently sprung. Her delivery of the aria " r sai chi Vonore," in the 3rd scene of Ist act, elicited the most rapturous appla u se ; but an attempt to encore it failed—the singer was, evidently, unprepared for an immediate repetition of so fatiguing an effort. We may sincerely congratulate Titiens on the success achieved by her on Tuesday ; and whilst so doing, we hope she will for give us if we suggest a little increased attention to the modulation of her fine voice, and the suppression of a disagreeable noise when she inhales her breath —a defect only when exaggerated in anguish or when introduced indiscriminately into every form of enunciation. MADAME SZABVADY, better known as Wilhelmini Clauss, gave her first matinee this season at Willis's rooms last Monday. The programme included Mendelssohn's trio in C minor, for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello ; Bach's chromatic fantasia and fugue in D minor; Beethoven's sonata in U; and three or four small pieces by Chopin and Heller. In the trio she was assisted by M. Sainton and Signor Piatti. Mine. Szarvady comes back to us in some respects a more accomplished pianists than before ; her tone is fuller and richer, her execution more perfect, her touch more even, her phrasing rounder, her accent more decided. This progress is the natural result of further practice and experience, and deserves the warmest acknowledgment ; but it is not upon the possession of these qualities that her reputation mainly rests. Her highest gifts are an active mind and a singularly delicate and sensitive frame. She never seeks to display her mechanical skill ; she uses it for a pur pose, and appears to use it almost unconsciously. She bail thoughts to communicate—not her own thoughts, but the composer's—which, through her acute sensibility, have powerfully seized upon her, and with these thoughts her mind seems always occupied. She has vast resources of commu nication, a wonderful power of expressing herself, but she uses them as such, and no more. The machinery is beautiful and admirable in itself, but the work done by it is the great thing ; and the work that Mine. Szarvady does is to breathe a spirit into everything she touches. An automaton piano forte might be constructed which would play a sonata of Beethoven with perfect accuracy ; the machine work would perhaps be more accurate than any hand-work, but yet it would be utterly dead. The sonata would be no more than a lifeless body, draw ing attention only by its still beauty, looking at no one, speaking to no one, motionless and voiceless. But let this music pass through the mind of an artist like Mine. Szarvady, and it is no longer deed ; it lives, and moves, sod speaks. It does not perhaps say all that Beethoven meant it to say, but the interpreter makes us know as much of the composer's meaning as she understands herself, and that is not a little. We need not go into the details of the programme. Various as was the music selected, Mine. Szariady's performance was admirable throughout. Enthusiasm is not to be expected from these afternoon audi , inces in the West end, but her playing was listened to with evident delight. Miss AR &BELLA GODDARD gave a soiree of classical pianoforte music at Willis's-rooms on Wednesday evening, the last of her second series this season. The selection was only too good. An air with varia tions, for pianoforte and violoncello, by Mendelssohn; three sonatas by Weber, Mozart, and Beethoven; and three fugues by Scarlatti, Bach, and Mendelssohn— this is not a feast, but a debauch. And yet so seduc tive was each successive dish, and so well were the courses arranged, that the appetite of the audience never failed. First, Mendelssohn's air with varia tions, all tenderness and melancholy; then the wild spirit of Weber's last sonata; then the quaint fugues of Sculatti and Bach, giving all the more relish for the luscious melody of Mozart's sonata in B flat; and then Me n d e l sso h n ' s s t a t e ly fugue in 117) major. What second part could tempt people after such a first' Nothing but Beethoven's posthumous sonata in B flat, that wonderful and almost impossible No. 106, which no one but Miss Goddard in London, at least, has ever ventured to attempt. Like the choral s ymphony and the mass in D, the very announce ment of this sonata is enough to bring together a crowd of musicians; and while these are lost in wonder at . the miracles of execution achieved by the young maniste, the extraordinary beauty of the music is acknowledged by all. The absence of warmth which we sosometimes regret in Miss Goddard is probably in this instance the condition of success ; in the midst of such unheard-of difficulties the slightest nervous agitation would be fatal. Miss Goddard THE PRESS, MAY 15,1858. betrays nothing of the sort; she takes her seat with the quietest confidence, performs her task without the quiver of a muscle, and rises from the piano with a little laugh of triumph. It is a wonderful thing to hear, but still more wonderful to see. Not only is every note played without slip or failure, but played with the most utter sangfroid. Miss Goddard was assisted in Mendelssohn's air variee by Mr. Horatio Chipp, and the violin part of Mozart's sonata was beautifully played by M. Sainton. Our young English pianists is becoming every day a greater favourite, and the applause which was liberally bestowed u pen her was well-deserved. TEE Times seems to have recently acquired some musical notions of a novel character. In its number of yesterday, in describing the new Opera•house .it says, " In one corner the men are building up, with all its intricacies of diapasons and fugues, a large organ, big enough for a church." In another column, in describing the new bell for the clock tower, we are told that, in the first bell, " the thickness of metal in one part caused its note to alter from what it was intended—E, to E natural. With the present monster no accident of the kind has occurred, and its note is exactly what it was intended it aliottkd ba c namely, E." _ , 4e°,/ •• lint gi4rll ROYAL ACADEMY. (Third Notios.) Mn. FRITH'S " Derby-day "is still the lion of the ex hibition. A railing has been fixed before it, and crowd surrounds it from morning to night. With a good deal of patience it is possible to examine the various groups which compose the picture ; but a general view is not at present to be had. This, how ever, does not so much signify for the detail is the great thing ; an English mob, though it affords a good opportunity for the study of character, is nothing very picturesque when seen from a distance. The arrange. ment of the subject shows extraordinary skill ; the figures are distributed into a number of groups, many of which would form picture.' in themselves, and yet nothing of the tumult and disorder of the scene is lost. All the principal features and incidents of a racecourse are presented at one view, though there is nothing formal or arti fi cial about the composition. The number of figures introduced is very large ; but there is character in all : nothing is put in merely to fill up. A good deal of humour is displayed and some feeling ; and there is a life and vigour about the whole picture quite sufficient to ac count for its great popularity. Webster's three pictures are called " Summer," " Sunday Evening," and " Grace before Meat "—all rustic subjects, of course. " Sunday Evening " is perhaps the best; but we do not feel much satisfac tion in any of them. Not that we have any great fault to find, but there is a feebleness about them, and a repetition of old faces and old expressions, not at all like the results of honest work. Hook's pic • tures of country life are taken from a somewhat similar point of view ; we do not mean, of course, that he has any of Webster's humour, but he sets himself to depict the simpler rustics virtues. It is happy country life that be paints for the most part ; but he takes country people very much as he finds them, and does not refine like Webster. There is no want of vigour in his conceptions, but he is some what too regardless of beauty and rather coarse in his execution. In this latter respect be has not improved during the past year, but rather the reverse. He has a picture from the same subject as Webster's " Summer "—a labourer in the Selds rest ing himself at midday and playing with his child, the mother and grandfather looking on. The rough vigour of the one picture presents a strong contrast to the feeble prettiness of the other. Hook's land scape in this, as well as in his other work, the " Pastoral," is well studied and very true. " Fairy Tales," by Dobson, is a charming picture of a little girl seated on • cushion, with her doll propped up beside her, and taking her first draught of the pleasures of imagination. A very young child buried in thought is always a pretty sight, but prettier than ever in Mr. Dobson's picture. " Hagar and Ishmael sent away," by the same artist, is a highly respectable production, not altogether worthy of the subject, nor yet absurdly below it. A painter of very similar powers is Mr. Le Jenne, whose pic ture of "The Early Days of Timothy" may be described in much the same terms. His " Children Gathering Water-lilies" is also a very pretty, graceful group. Mr. Feed is not so successful this year as he has been of late. His principal piece is entitled, " A listener never hears gude o' himsel ; " the listener is a ill-favoured elderly man, who has sent a love letter to a "braw " cottage lass, and is coming to follow it up. He finds her with a young lover and 467 another girl, and behind the cottage door he hears them all making merry over his letter. There is really great talent displayed in the picture; . it is perfectly natural, the expression of every face is quite right, and there is a dry kind of humour about it. But yet one does not feel much pleasure in looking at it, perhaps because it is too natural. The subject would be amusing if it were a little carica tured—if it were not so real ; in itself, it is rather an unpleasant one. The " Ayrshire Lassie" is merely a study of a single figure, and the " Sunbeams " represents a mother playing with her child, and the child playing with its own shadow on the wall. The child is decidedly ugly, and the shadow simply im possible : the mother is very handsome, and sits like a Cleopatra. We do not know whether Scotch peasants fall naturally into such magnificent atti tudes, but they are not common on this side of the Border ; and why in a picture aiming only at pretti ness should such a miracle of ugliness have been introduced as that old crone of a grandmother? She looks like a witch meditating the manufacture of a philtre out of the baby's liver. Mr. Solomon has taken to comedy this year, and two very funny pictures ho has made. The "Lion in love " is an old officer seated on the sofa beside s pretty young lady, who plays the Dejanira with the red-coated Hercules, making him thread her needle and hold her Berlin wool. " Madam Blaine" slumbers in her pew, as Goldsmith described her, " in silks and satins new, and hoop of monstrous size ;" but Mr. Solomon has added also a touch or two of his own; the sunlight through the crimson curtain is good, and increases the gorgeousness of the figure ; but what is the meaning of the young girl beside her? She seems to be there merely for the sake of contrast ; but she forms as prominent an object in the picture as Madam herself. "The Flight "is something more serious—a group of ladies and children escaping from the sepoys—rather a feeble production, and seems to have been painted, as people say, all out of the artist's own head. Mr. Hughes' picture of " The Nativity " is one of the very few which can be picked out at any distance as Pre-Raphaelite. It has some great merits, but eems to us a piece of affectation. Three figures, all having precisely the same heads, occupy the fore ground; two of them furnished with wings we take to be angels ; one holds a lantern and the other the Infant, about whose body the third, whom we may safely conclude to be either the Virgin or somebody else, is wrapping the swaddling clothes. Looking in at the window of the stable are three cherubs strictly limited to heads and wings, and very gym metrici.lly drawn up. On the floor lies a sheep, and a kind of mystic or symbolio straw. Now we call this affected because it is not the way in which a man living and thinking in the nineteenth century would naturally treat the subject. Mr. Hughes affects a style which to the early Italian painters was natural. lie copies, too, something of their manner of drawing. We heartily admit all that can be said of the expression of the angel who is looking upwards—it is exquisitsly pure and beautiful, and the light emitted from the face is painted with won drous skill—but look at the contour of the figure ; Goat throat to knee is one bard, straight line. If such an attitude be possible, surely there is nothing to recommend it. Why should we go out of our way for something that is ugly, when what is beautiful ties before us ? The colouring of the picture is very remarkable, and in some parts very beautiful, bat we do not think the artist has succeeded in the mother-of-pearl tints he has attempted to impart to the angels. He has only given the raw colours, without the softness and the radiance. We are a good deal puzzled, too, on first looking at the picture, by those red bars that cross one of the lower corners ; and it is only after some little consideration, and putting of things together, that we discover them to be a part of an angel's wing. The new hieroglyphic which Mr. Hughes has adopted to express this ima ginary limb is singularly original. " Weary Life," by Mr. Carrick, is a painting in which the Pre-Raphaelite principles are partially car ried out. A country girl finds a travelling mounte bank and his little daughter asleep under a rick. There is something very pitiful and touching in these sleeping figures, and they are painted with great accuracy and minuteness, but the picture is injured by a false effect of light and shadow, and the action of the girl is very feeble. HERE Josclux.—This celebrated artiste will per form Bach's Chaconne for the Violin, at the concert of the Vocal Association, to take place at St. James's hall, on Friday evening next, May 21st. The Vocal Association, of three hundred voices, will also per form some of their most popular part-songs and madrigals. HER MAJESTY'S TimAnat.—The admirers of Mlle. Titiens--and they include all the musical con noisseurs of London—will next week have an oppor innity of seeing her in each of the three characters ih which she has appeared. A