Symphonic Jitterbugs

Adolescents who are yanked off to symphony concerts by culture-maddened parents often conceive a permanent dislike for symphonic music. Symphony boards of directors have long wondered how to make these adolescents take it and like it. Six years ago, Philadelphia's platinum-blond Conductor Leopold Stokowski suggested a solution: make the parents stay away. Thereupon he started a series of "Concerts for Youth," sold tickets to youth only (between 13 and 25), got "bouncers" to patrol the aisles of the staid Academy of Music with orders to throw out anyone who looked overage.

To his carefully selected audience Conductor Stokowski played full-weight symphonic programs. But he punctuated them with speeches, quips, unprogrammed surprises. He held conversations with them across the footlights, let them wriggle, whistle, cheer, shout, sing, throw paper darts. Once, when they dared him to, he brought down the wrath of Philadelphia's Tories by playing the Internationale. Stokowski's Youth Concerts became the most jam-packed events of the Philadelphia Orchestra's season. Optimistic highbrows felt that a sizable percentage of Philadelphia's jitterbugs had been saved for Beethoven.

Last week Conductor Stokowski, back in Philadelphia on a return engagement, rounded out the sixth season of Philadelphia's Youth Concerts. Three thousand youngsters crammed the aged Academy of Music. (This season's tickets were all sold out two hours after they were placed on sale.) As a special treat Stokowski gave them a world premiere: Alexander Gretchaninoff's Fifth Symphony. Then, as one adolescent, the whole audience sang Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, Schubert's Ave Maria and a brand-new Philadelphia Youth Song to music by Sibelius. Maestro Stokowski called for more jive: "Let the walls rock and the ceiling move up and down," he cried. "I want to see that chandelier agitated by its emotion!"

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