The case of Tchaïkovsky, with his one great Symphony overtopping by such immeasurable heights all his other compositions of whatever kind, is isolated. One is almost compelled to think of everything else in the light of the one great work. Here is something that dimly foreshadows the stupendous battle-picture in the first movement. There we note some faint suggestion of that power to represent a heart full of the most awful foreboding, amid scenes of gaiety and gallantry, which gives its peculiar character to the celebrated 5--4 movement; and there are foretastes of the bustle and excitement rendered on a gigantic scale in the scherzo, of the triumphal note in the March, of the final despairing wail. But all else is faint and fragmentary by comparison with the great symphony. The "Romeo and Juliet" overture, played yesterday, is probably Tchaïkovsky's best early composition, and it is certainly that which suggests the great last symphony in the most unmistakable manner. The poetic basis of the tone-picture is to a considerable extent the same in both. A warning prologue leads to the scenes of violence and bloodshed. Then follows a romantic love-story with a tragic ending. Everything in the overture is extremely well done--the fighting music is graphic and the love music is deeply fraught with feeling,--but it is not a bit Shakespearean in spirit. The peculiar neuralgic pathos which haunts nearly all Tchaïkovsky's works takes us into a fevered and unnatural atmosphere very unlike Shakespeare's; and the fighting is gory and realistic in the haggard manner of Verestchagin. As with Berlioz's treatment of "Faust," one must not seek for any sort of fidelity to the spirit of the original. It is better to rest satisfied with the striking and eloquent picture, founded on external features of a well-known poem but belonging essentially to the composer's own dream-world. The overture was splendidly played yesterday. Dr. Richter's interpretation most fully revealed the beauty of the introduction, where the composer had succeeded in finding a note of pathos unlike his usual narrow and egotistic or merely tormented vein. Specially remarkable was the fine precision of the percussion instruments in the sections representing the strife of the Montagues and Capulets; but it is scarcely necessary to mention details, for the whole tone-picture was superbly presented. [Sidenote: =Symphony in E Minor.= _March 8, 1901._]