If there's one thing the American public goes for besides parades, scandals, fires and banjo players, it's child prodigies. Put a kid up on the stage with a violin or at a piano and you've got it made. What's unique about this response to precocious virtuosity is that repertory and even musical values are suspended with the disbelief. The most musically uninformed and even uninterested audience is guaranteed to go ga-ga over the Wunderkind. Some of it is, I am sorry to say, at least in part akin to the reaction to the little baton-twirlers, gymnastettes and petite figure skaters.

Does anyone in the audience think "Yes, but what about child abuse? How much of mama or papa-push and worse, brow-beat, figure into it?" Just by listening to how the music comes out, experienced ears can tell how much sense and understanding it reveals and from that infer a great deal. Of course there are exceptions, tiny ones who take to the instruments and to music like trout fingerlings to the stream--the naturals. I haven't sensed or heard that Sarah Chang's prodigious performances as a 13 year-old were parent-driven (as apart from parent-supported). Yo-Yo Ma is the prime example of a musician born to it, whose talents were cultivated beautifully, who was educated at Harvard and has been, before and since, a fully rounded person and deeply informed, thoughtful, creative interpretive artist. It was recently reported that "every two or three engagements, around the world, Ma volunteers to teach a master class, visit schools or hear students play."

Not too many years ago, at a master class he was giving at the San Francisco Conservatory, Ma listened to the 14 or 15 year-old Hai Ye Ni play, then asked her about her plans, her interests and reasons for being in music. (She was yet to go on and become the youngest ever to win the Naumburg Award.) Not satisfied with her answers, Ma suggested that she take a year off, study other things, grow, etc. Naumburg achievement aside, it was the right advice.

For every prodigy who goes on to "make it" and to make serious music, maturing and evolving into a well-rounded person, there are several of the others whose career paths range from mechanical virtuosity to personal train wrecks. Child abuse is behind it. The Sacramento-born pianist Ruth Slenczynska was a famous case, father-driven to the point where she gave up her career very early. (Later in life she did make a comeback, as an effective teacher). The Helfgott history is for now at least, part of the American (short-lived) consciousness but I still doubt whether enough to cause the audience to wonder when they listen to the Wunderkind of the moment...

There are evident cases of anorexia, one of which ended tragically during this past year with the death of a ballerina. Second-or third-hand reports of child-beating by the parent are not uncommon but does anyone, even a concerned relative report it? Who dares interfere in a child's path to stardom?

Sometimes parents who are immigrants are driven to see the child secure a foothold for itself and the family via a musical career, encouraged by their narrow, misguided perception that music doesn't call for language proficiency and higher education. That lottery ticket doesn't always win. At a national competition some years ago, a three-man cello jury on which I served, selected finalist X for musicality over finalist Y despite his superior technique (their names and histories were revealed to us only after the judging). Later, I read a newspaper column's account of the loser's returning home to "meet the flying fists of his father." Heartbreaking. That young man had done wonderfully and certainly distinguished himself.

Another time at a Young Musicians' Foundation Finals in Los Angeles, the jury of a dozen eminent musicians, including Gregor Piatigorsky, Raphael Druian, George Neikrug, Kurt Herbert Adler, Richard Lert, were stunned when a girl about 15 but dressed by mama to look 11 or 12 (knee socks, hair ribbon. pleated little skirt) came out and played Mozart, Piston and Bach splendidly. The judges were saying things like "When Yehudi was 16 he didn't phrase like that!" Well, Lilit Gampel never got anywhere. A few years later, she eloped to Israel, married (it was said that this was rebellion against her mother) and settled down. She dropped completely out of sight and hearing for a long time. Now she is back playing, as a free-lance musician in New York

While Gampel's early emergence was clearly a function of Mutter-Trieb, there was no mistaking her innate musicality. In most cases, the playing of children too early fledged onto the concert stage unmistakably reflects a lack of musical understanding. It's a deficiency that often carries from the pupa to the adult stage. A number of such, in their music-making in later life, still sound like grown children. When they come to town, highly promoted, you hear them and wonder why they went into music, what is it they love about the pieces they play and even what do they love about their instruments.

There's a whole mini-industry with these Wunderkinder. The master teacher Dorothy De Lay receives young violinists already prepared and at a high point of skill, for which the original teachers get absolutely no public credit, on her insistence, I've been told. The fledglings study with her assistants, to a large extent, but--and that's an important reason for their being there--it's her reputation and clout that gives them a big send-off into the competitive concert world. Is it the teaching or the imprimatur? At that stage, probably the latter.

The music/entertainment industry is partly to blame but that force is simply exploiting parental greed and ambition on the one hand and the public's naive vulnerability on the other. The public nourishes its capacities for sentimental response coupled with eagerness to be in on a discovery. The feelings involved are false of course. Few out there husband compassion for the child "prodigy" of the moment, true human concern for its welfare. There ought to be a law, or some screening process and if not that, at least honest, investigative journalism to expose exploitation and musical abuse of children.