Showing the Adults How It's Done.

If young musicians and listeners have no interest in classical music, how is it that organizations like the New York Youth Symphony continue to thrive? Founded in 1963, it has grown from a youth orchestra into a large, streamlined program with chamber groups, jazz ensembles and classes in conducting and composition. And its players, ages 12 to 21, are sufficiently devoted to the music that when they perform at Carnegie Hall, as they did on Sunday afternoon, they produce a sound that would do an adult orchestra proud, in programs built largely of cornerstones of the standard canon. Ryan McAdams, the orchestra's 28-year old conductor, framed this first program of the season with a pair of big display pieces, Strauss's ''Don Juan'' and Respighi's ''Pines of Rome.'' Both demand stamina and agility from the players as well as a conductor with an interpretive imagination strong enough to bring to life the visual imagery within these scores and the discipline to keep them from devolving into streams of effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]