AT A GREAT CONCERT.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 450, 1 March 1890, Page 5

AT A GREAT CONCERT.

(From the “ Melbourne Argus.”)

There are times when we feel content with ourselves and our institutions in this city of Melbourne. Cup days, Exhibition openings, first nights, Budget occasions, and so forth. Latest may be enumerated Saturday night’s performance of “ The Messiah.” A glance within the door was quite sufficient to show the fulness of the success. The great hall was packed in every part. Choir and orchestra thronged the platform, every chair on the floor had an occupant, and thoughtful musical people tilled the galleries. All the critics were here and all the music lovers. Hundredo of men and of women sat with the full scores of the oratorio in their hands like students, anxious net to miss one particle in a lesson which might never be heard again. Probably they did regard the performance as a great losson, and, unhappily for us, as a lesson that will not proba&ly be repeated ; for it must be plain that such combinations cannot often bebroughtabout, even by supreme organising genius. Our Melbourne Philharmonic Society, with the education of years of training, and as principals, the greatest oratorio singer of the age, supported by others not unworthy of such association. Mr Santley is a good friend of our grand mother tongue in this way. The language which serves to interpret the psalmist and the apostle is good enough for him, but then he is so exceedingly careful to speak it true. “He sings as John Bright used to speak,” said a man of experience, and the comparison was accutate and good. And then he recognises so thoroughly that bo l h music and words are but means to an end which is to convey at times a stupendous meaning. How thoroughly did he bring home to us the grand passion of the psalmist in his rendering of “ Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and the people imagine a vain thing ?” There was the full ring of haughty challenge in his utterance.

The great oratorio rolled along with punctuations in the frequent crash of the orchestra, low thunder of the organ, and peal after peal of applause. And we came to the one supreme chorus; the universal classic, the “ Hallelujah,” the one thing in music which has been taken right out of the ordinary category, ' set up, enshrined, enthroned, to be approached with homage for ever and ever. Orchestra, chorus, and principals rise, and, obedient to the faintest invitation from the conductor, the audience rises also, and the full flood of inspiration is poured forth. And surely it is good that we should respond so, that the voice of the master should not speak to us in vain, that, despite the creeping strains of a cold materialism and morbid scepticism, which run like ice streams through our being, wo should still be able to rise as one man when a worthy voice proclaims the truth that “ The Lord God Omnipotent Reignetb.”