NELSON HARMONIC SOCIETY.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 316, 30 October 1860, Page 2

NELSON HARMONIC SOCIETY.

The second private concert of this social society was given in the Masonic Hall, on Thursday evening last, to an audience numbering nearly three hundred persons. On this occasion the programme consisted entirely of secular music, and the selection was varied and judicious. Songs of the most sterling order, and glees of our own country's origin, were varied with German and Italian part-songs; and a selection from Bellini's opera LaSomnambula, brilliant and striking to a concert audience, was tempered with those beautiful though less dazzling compositions of Rossini, the ' Prayer' from Moses in Egypt, and 'La Carita.' We were much pleased with a song of the character just referred to, written hy Edward Land, and entMed 'When Sorrow sleepeth, wake it not,' and which was a very appropriate introduction to the solo and chorus which succeeded.

The beautiful cavatina ' Come into the garden, Maud,' by Balfe, and sung for the first time in Nelson, we could have wished had been introduced at a more advanced part of the concert, at which time our ears would, so to speak, have become attuned to melody, and enabled us the more fully to enjoy this exquisite production. The duet' Le Zingare' was most admirably sung and deservedly redemanded.

Of the merits of each separate performance we feel a difficulty in speaking on this occasion: Suffice it to say, that the concert evidenced great care not only in the selection of the pieces, but in the manner in which they have been practised, to enable so large a chorus of amateurs withal to render them with such precision. We can only add that a most favorable impression was the result of the second entertainment of this fast progressing society. We understand that Handel's sublime oratorio The Messiah will be given in its entirety during the Christmas week, to be immediately succeeded by a secular concert similar to the one of whi6h we have now spoken so favorably.