MUSICAL CRITICISM.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2444, 18 January 1881, Page 4

MUSICAL CRITICISM.

The following is a sample of the musical criticism dealt out by the Auckland “ Free Lance ” :—•

We are indeed pleased to welcome Mr Lewis Scott to the musical world once more. Mr Scott sang all the principal chorus solos in the Garden Palace “ Messiah,” and sang them with such a vim that his very spectacles seemed to sing along with him. He is a 40-horse power, back action, horizontal, chronometer-movement tenor, and when Lewis gets his back up on Handel, fog-horns and earthquakes are not to be named in the same street with him. Mr Scott was the orignial Adam in the “ Creation,” and his musical education was blasted into him at the Royal Academy of Strathbogie, where he passed as Ho. 1 R.A.M. of the first quarter. He made his first appearance in the same year as the Colorado beetle,the piece being Mozart’s sublime oratorio, “ Her Shoosterwoosterhoofemfoofem, or The Man with the White Hat,” and as there happened to be a sober man reporting that night, the “ Herald ” next day contained the following notice: “The principal feature of the evening (after Mozart) was the debut of a Mr Lewis Scott, a most young and pleasing tenor. Mr Scott] possesses an exceedingly raelodious person, and a very handsome voice, and he wades into his parts Avjth all the heaven inspired confidence of a man who holds four aces. In his bravura singing there is a certain inu lento, or rather a pocojpoco de buccaroo. which is artistic in the extreme ; the delirium tremens : pf his aypogiatura on the B flat reminds the hearer of Julius Ctusar in his best form, and the dolce far nientc of. Ins upper register produces upon his audience what Schumann calls a sort of vmbcrdiedergoosteh-bnms-craft, which fills every soul with feelings of the strongest emotion, and raises it up to the celestial arcana or the most mellifluous' melodious melody. His fine aria in the first act, which describes the soothing- effect of Mick Simmons’ tin-tag ' tobacco, was given in the most brilliant manner possible ; the beautiful recitative in which he tells Johanna the soprana, that the Osborne wire and twine self-binding harvesters are the best in the market, was rendered con amore, whilst the concluding scena, ‘And Don’t You Forget It,’ was simply a gorgeous triumph of the vocal art. We predict a brilliant future for Mr Scott in the operatic world—especially if he’s not cut off by the present heavy frosts.”