Concert Hall

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's new concert hall in suburban Washington passes a key construction milestone today when builders hold a "topping off" ceremony to mark completion of its exterior shell. The event, set to begin at 10:30 a.m., is a sign that the $90 million project, called the Music and Education Center at Strathmore, is halfway finished and on schedule for its targeted opening in the winter of 2004-2005. Representatives of the Strathmore Hall Foundation, the operator, have expressed a strong desire to open in early December of next year, which would allow them to book revenue-producing holiday concerts and events.

Eighteenth-century music historian Charles Burney defined music as "an innocent luxury, unnecessary, indeed, to our existence, but a great improvement and gratification of the sense of hearing." When it comes to the ultimate in luxurious gratification of the sense of hearing, where we listen to music can be as important as what we listen to - and there's the rub. Although the ancient Greeks managed to do pretty darn well with acoustics - in outdoor amphitheaters, no less - hordes of physicists, engineers, architects and other high-priced specialists do not guarantee fabulous acoustical results these days.

The holiday season calendar tends to fill up pretty quickly, so it's not too soon to start your shopping for classical music concerts in December. One classy upcoming program to keep in mind is the Columbia Orchestra's next concert on Saturday, Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School. Just as chestnuts are roasting on an open fire at this time of year, the program ignites with beloved musical chestnuts by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. However, it also includes the Maryland premiere of a short piece by New York-based composer Nkeiru Okoye.

A festival of double-reed instrumentsThere's going to be double-reed madness this month at Towson State University. That's because this week the university is hosting the 20th anniversary conference of the Double Reed Society. The following week Towson State will present individual seminars on the English horn and the bassoon.Between Tuesday and Saturday more than 600 bassoonists, oboists English hornists and contrabassoonists from throughout the world -- some from as far away as South Africa, Korea and Japan -- will be in Towson to play their instruments (more than 35 concerts in all)

LOS ANGELES - My musical life passed before my eyes last Friday night when the Berlin Philharmonic played Schubert in the new Walt Disney Concert Hall, an architectural fantasia that has captivated the City of Angels. As a girl growing up in Los Angeles, I went with my father to the symphony often, just the two of us, to hear the L.A. Philharmonic. In those days, the conductor was the urbane Zubin Mehta, whose oil portrait hung in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion - until lately the home of the Philharmonic.

It's the splat of clay on hard wooden tables. The tapping of shoes on a floor. The smell of acrylic paint seeping from beneath studio doors and the paintings that hang on every wall.It is Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, housed in a redbrick building nestled between quaint pastel homes in Annapolis. Sculpture and dance, music and painting blossom in classrooms where high school students once studied algebra and biology, English and history."It's a place where the arts come alive," said Ellen O. Moyer, an Annapolis alderwoman who was one of Maryland Hall's founding members.

John Gidwitz, who has guided the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through two decades of growth, will step down as president at the end of the 2003-2004 season, he announced yesterday. Since taking his position in 1984, Gidwitz oversaw a tripling of the BSO's budget; recruitment of Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov as music director; and creation of a second BSO concert hall in Montgomery County, slated to open in 2005. "It's time," he said yesterday in his office at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Four decades ago, "Company" opened on Broadway, putting Stephen Sondheim firmly on the music theater map. The show left an indelible impression on a young person who saw the premiere in 1970. "I was taken to the show when I was 11 years old for my birthday," said actor and director Lonny Price. "'Company' has one of the best collections of theater songs ever. This show never gets old for me. It never disappoints me. " Back in April, Price directed a starry concert version of the Sondheim classic presented by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.

In a letter to the editor published Thursday, the name of the author of a previously published letter was spelled incorrectly. It was written by Charles N. Valenti.* The Sun regrets the error.ReactionaryThe indignities that women have been subjected to throughout history were profoundly obvious in the June 16 letter by Charles N. Valentin of Lewes, Del.Thanks to Mr. Valentin's unholy ideas, not only women, but all thinking people can see precisely why the Catholic Church is having a worse time of it in this day and age than it did in the Reformation.

Everyone who listens to music knows the question and knows the answer."How do you get to Carnegie Hall?""Practice, practice, practice . . ."It is significant that Carnegie Hall is the only concert hall about which such a joke is told. For European as well as American musicians and music lovers, it is the hall that represents the pinnacle -- the place where reputations are made and legends live on.Carnegie celebrates its 100th season this year, beginning with a gala concert Wednesday by violinist Itzhak Perlman and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and continuing into early summer with a roster of artists and programs that no other concert hall can match.