CHILDREN'S CONCERTS

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18419, 27 June 1925, Page 11

CHILDREN'S CONCERTS

CLASSICAL MUSIC. (FHOU OUE OWN COERESrONDENT.) SYDNEY, Juno 18. The first of ai series of children's concerts in Sydney marks one of the most important functions of tho Conservotorium of Music under the new guidance of Mr Arundel Orchard, and brings this city into line with a movement which has been established for many years in some of the big cities abroad. The aim, of course, is to foster among the young a love and knowledge of one .of the finest of the arts and to make the children of to-day familiar -with the great classics in music in order that, as the concert audiences of the near future, they may have an intelligent understanding of those works and thus spread throughout the community the refining and wholesomo influence of the musical art. This movement comes at a, most opportune time—at a period when tho cheap and tawdry jazz and other similar music is threatening to efface from the thoughts of the youngsters the real splendours of the musical art. Thus a groat field awaits the enterprise of Mr Arundel Orchard. The decision of the Government to placo the Conservatorium Orchestra upon a more secure financial basis, has now made it possible for him to establish those concerts and thus fulfil, in a. peculiar degree, one of the great educational functions of the Conservatorium. The opening concert was a. marked success and established a new era in the history of music in Australia. The youngsters will now have a livelier .and more significant interest in, and a better understanding of, great works of which many of them had not even heard. Handel's "Water Music," as an illustration, with its pretty history, and. again, the story of "Hansel rjnd Gretel," made a great appeal to the youngsters.