CHILDREN’S CONCERTS.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15979, 6 May 1924, Page 6

CHILDREN’S CONCERTS.

EXAMPLE FROM NEW YORK. (By London Times Musis--Tritic.) There is a project afoot to start a course of children’s concerts in London on the lines of those which have been an established institution in New York and elsewhere in America. The matter has now gone so far that a date is announced for the first concert (Saturday, March 28, at it a.m., in the Central Hall, Westminster), when Mr Adrian Boult will conduct an orchestral programme designed to be attractive to, and not too exacting for, the youthful mind. We have had a good many children’s concerts before; Miss Gwynne Klmpton began her spirited pioneer work in this direction with a series in the spring of 1911, and, more recently, the lecture recitals of Miss Clarissa Speed at the Kingsway Hall and elsewhere have sought to offer similar blends of entertainment and education. There have been others. Jn some cases, perhaps, the educational side had been a little overstressed. That is always likely to happen when some zealous enthusiast for “appreciation" is invited to explain the music to the audience. For that reason one is glad to note that, whatever comment in words is to be made in the new series, will be made by the conductor of the orchestra. He should be the person less likely to put talk in the place of music. Indeed, with such a programme as is proposed for the first concert, very little talk should be needed. It illustrates the component parts of the orchestra. Mozart’s Rondino in G for strings. Beethoven's Rondino in E for wind lead to the introduction to Act 111. of “ Die Mcistersinger,” wilier displays strings and brass in combination, and finally Tchaikovsky’s Scherzo to the fourth Symphony plays off strings, woodwind, and brass first in separate groups, then together. it seems a simple course to give just a word to excite interest in the contrasting tones and then turn to tre music and get as much enjoyment from it as possible.

Regular and Frequent. But the essential point about such a scheme is that the concerts should be regular and frequent. This is where the American organisations for music have such a pull over our haphazard English ways. Mr Walter Damrosch started his Young People’s concerts about thirty years ago, and for many years now a season of them has been as regular an activity of the New York Symphony Orchestra as the adult symphony concerts. The idea behind them is to create audiences who having got into the habit of thinking musically in early years will want to continue their experiences in the concert room later. Mr Damrosch hinted to me in conversation that there is only one flaw in the running of this machinery, and that is the difficulty of getting the young people of 20, years ago or so to graduate into the adult audience and make room for the young people of to-day in the concerts intended for them. The danger, he finds, is lest the audience of young people’s concerts should be made up of grandparents. However, the thing spreads. It is always possible in such encouraging circumstances to start another series and call it “Younger People’s Concerts,” or it might be necessary 7 later to label the various series “generation 1,2, and 3,” etc. What matter the name so long as they are giving music to people who want it in the way they want it! Since I left New Y r ork the Philharmonic Society there has begun a parallel movement to the longestablished one of Mr Damrosch, plan, ing Mr Ernest Schclling in command of its orchestra for the purpose. An interesting account of the opening one, which Mr Lawrence Gilman wrote in the Tribune, told how a series of lantern slides with pictures of instruments and of composers were used to illustrate what Mr Schelling had to say of the music. This might be too cumbersome unless the man who directs has the right " way witr him," Mr Shelling emphatically have, though their two ways are different ways. By the bye, it is just possible that this new undertaking in London may give the chance of seeing what Mr Damrosch’s way is, for he may possibly pay a visit to it and take charge of one of its concerts. Need of Permanence. But our difficulty in London always is, and will be in this instance, the idfficulty of insuring permanence. In New York, or in Philadelphia, where Mr Stokowski does much the same, the directors of each orchestra regard such concerts as an essential part of the educative propaganda by which their institutions can be kept alive. They do not expect their concerts to pay in the commercial sense, but they do expect them to be used by a musical community, and consequently they are taking pains to develop the musical proclivities of the young. That is the clear-sighted American way, and it is comparatively easy to apply where initial expenditure presents no special difficulty. One gathers that some funds have been found by some disinterested enthusiasts to start the London project, but that the continuance of the concerts will depend very much on the public demand for them Looking at the half-empty concert, halls of London during the last few weeks one begins to wonder whether there is any considerable public demand for music of any kind. Even the widely advertised performance of Dame Ethel Smyth’s Mass on Saturday did not produce a really crowded Queen’s Hall, and recent symphony concerts of whatever orchestra have been very poorly attended. No doubt this is partly due to temporary circumstances, hut it is additional evidence of the need for building up keen and intelligent audiences. If this effort is lo have any success it must get, and get quickly, (he co-operation of school teachers, parents and others, who control, or are controlled, by the juveniles whose interests are being catered for. Tickets at one shilling and two shillings, issued to children and to grown-up people accompanied by children, seems a very advantageous proposal. it. might be almost worth while to try it in place of the cinema, willed has apparently become a habit in so many families. Really, tlic question this project proposes to test is whether orchestral music of the finest kLJ, and given for its own sake, can become a habit. Sir Henry Wood tested it, and got an answer in the affirmative when he founded the Promenade Concerts, but this proposal is to make the habit the stronger by beginning it younger.