MUSIC REVIEW : Levinson, 18, Skillfully Interprets Much of Brahms’ Latter Works : Despite his ability, sometimes other works in the young man’s recital at the Seal Beach Chamber Music Festival proved less satisfying.

By some quirk of the human spirit, a young artist sometimes finds immediate sympathy with the late reflections of an older composer. So it was when 18-year-old Max Levinson played Brahms’ last pieces for solo piano--”Vier Klavierstucke,” Opus 119--Thursday in his recital as part of the 16th annual Seal Beach Chamber Music Festival.

Despite distractions from crickets outside the McGaugh School auditorium doors, which had been opened to ventilate the warm hall, Levinson remained focused and offered an imaginative response to Brahms’ autumnal musings.

The pianist created intimacy and delicacy, but maintained a strong sense of line, whether in the reticent melancholy of the first Intermezzo or the wistful waltz of the second. Yet he had no trouble finding the power and boldness required for the composers’ last grand rhapsodic statements.

Levinson also bathed Chopin’s G-minor Ballade in a pervasive melancholy and regret, arguably minimizing contrasts in mood and not providing an ideally blooming account of the big heroic theme.

It would be unreasonable to expect Levinson at this age to be a fully developed artist, much less to be at the peak of his own capabilities. Perhaps inevitably in some music, he exhibited a young man’s propensity to value speed and brilliance at the expense of poetry, not only in his steely finish to the Chopin Ballade but also in a problematic account of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata.

Here, although he addressed the variations with sensitivity, his explosive intensity in the first movement and fast--though accurate--playing in the last could seem harsh, pushed and aggressive.

Yet plush and delicate tones were not beyond his capabilities, as witness his playing of Debussy’s “Des pas sur la neige” Prelude. Still, his approach to the same composer’s “L’Isle joyeuse” proved surprisingly serious and dour.

Levinson has appeared on the Seal Beach series before--two years ago on a Young Artist Guild-sponsored program. He was warmly welcomed back by the audience.

For encores, he played a Bach Gavotte with insouciant springiness, and Schubert’s A-flat Impromptu, Opus 90, with fleet lightness.