MUSIC AND YOUTH.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20274, 27 June 1931, Page 19

MUSIC AND YOUTH.

THE MODERN SPIRIT. MR LEVITZKPS AGREEABLE SURPRISE. As if immediately to prove wrong what he had said of the scornful attitude of youth towards music, Miseha Levitzki, when he entered the stage at the Municipal Concert Hall on Thursday evening, found himself confronted with row upon row of young faces. "My recital was a delightful surprise," he said yesterday. "I was pleased and encouraged to find so many youngsters in the audience. While I love to play for the mature listener, I get a very special joy when I play to the youngsters because 1 have the additional feeling that I am helping to mould in some small part their very conception of life and beauty, and because children are.so marvellously impressionable and responsive. ' "So many faces seemedalmost to contradict what I had said in my interview," Jie added. "I should like to [ emphasise again tliat I was speaking j principally of conditions in America. I i am not appointing myself an authority ! to pass judgment on the conditions of a country which I have visited for only 1 a few weeks. Even as far as my re- : marks concerned America, I did not | mean to convey the impression that my outlook for music was pessimistic. By ' nature, I am anything but pessimistic." American Youth. - Mr Levitzki insists, however, that the patriotism which conceals the truth is very poor patriotism. "I certainly did mean, however," he went on, "that the Vast majority of the youngsters in America to-day did not take in music Buch an interest as they should. And I am still convinced that the appreciation of all beautiful things is not on the increase but on. the decrease. "How would I improve the position? I would favour a complete revision, of the system of education so that it includes all the arts, so that love of "beautiful music, beautiful paintings, beautiful sculpture, is instilled and bred in the youngster as well as merely arithmetic and geography. Even 'instilled' is not the word, for I believe that every human being is born with an intuitive love of the beautiful" which needs only to be fostergd and trained. I don't think that modern education . reaches anywhere near the possibilities of a perfect system. * Poet-Warßeactlta. * "Besides, t&Q spirit of an age is controlled by elemental forces over which we have no power. You will remember that after one war in the Middle Ages Europe w&t dancing mad. Everyone danced. Life consists of contrasts. The tragedian in his private life is often a comedian, and the clown is a tragedian. When we pass through a long : period of suffering—a period such, as the Great War—-it is more than possible that forces come into being, reactionary forces, that we cannot even grasp, much This -spirit that I find among the young people of" the world to-day—the spirit of not taking life or ideals Beriously—may merely be the natural reaction to the tragedy . and suffering of the war. "I truly believe that we are going through a dark age-for art and music, but in spite of all these, .opinions, I have still the firm, basic conviction that music will never" die until the human rsiee itsielf dies."