By Susan Peterson

Gazette Staff

It will be an opening well worth the wait. Two years of restoration and renovation will be unveiled Friday, Sept. 20, at 8 p.m. for a recital in the revered Sanders Theatre of Memorial Hall. The 120-year-old theater will bring together several generations of Harvard students, alumni, and faculty, including distinguished international concert artists, for a multi-keyboard recital titled "The Great Sanders Restoration Recital: Playing for Keeps."

The recital will feature renowned pianists Stephen Drury '77, Randall Hodgkinson, Igor Kipnis '52, Professor Robert Levin '68, Christopher Taylor '92, and Professor Emerita Luise Vosgerchian.

Compositions by Harvard-associated composers Leon Kirchner and Ivan Tcherepnin '64 will be performed, as well as Schubert's Eight Variations on an Original Theme in A-flat Major for Piano, four hands by Levin and Vosgerchian. The grand finale will be an eight piano performance of Rossini's Semiramide Overture by 16 students, under the baton of James Yannatos, music director and conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra.

"Sanders is restored to its properly resplendent self, with all its original colors, gilding, banding, and glorious detail. It's worth a visit, just to look," said Jeremy Knowles, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the evening's co-host with Office for the Arts director Myra Mayman. "A keyboard concert -- never mind one that includes eight keyboards and 32 hands -- will launch Sanders' second century, splendidly."

"This is putting a keystone in place to revitalize what we're now calling the Memorial Hall/Lowell Hall Complex," said Mayman. "Sanders has been restored to what it was like when it first opened as a big, beautiful, warm, wooden hall -- but with the technical improvements for performances. It is a real step forward for performing groups and puts the arts at the center of the campus."

Sanders Theatre was first used for Harvard's 1876 Commencement and has, ever since, played an integral part in the College's mission. Today the theater provides a venue for many of the College's Core Curriculum courses as well as for many student and professional performance ensembles. The largest theater at Harvard, Sanders seats 1,100 in a semicircle around the stage.

The restoration of Sanders Theatre is the final phase of the nine-year revitalization of Memorial Hall, Harvard's Civil War memorial. Among the many improvements in Sanders are a new audio system, improved house and stage lighting, a wireless assisted listening system, increased electrical capacity, and improved wheelchair access.

"It seemed that one way to celebrate the future of Sanders was to commemorate its past," said Eric Engel, director of the Memorial Hall/Lowell Hall Complex. "We had several objectives when planning this event: to formally applaud the great work that's been done in the theater, to acknowledge Sanders as a place of learning, and to have a good time."

Engel added, "Sanders Theatre is an integral cultural landmark for both the Harvard and Cambridge communities. The fact that these upgrades were made without disruption to the fabric and character of the theater is a real tribute to the architectural firm of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, project manager Peter Riley, and the hundreds of others who contributed to the restoration."

Tickets to the Great Sanders Restoration Recital, which may be purchased at the Sanders Theatre Box Office (496-2222), are $25; $18 for students and seniors; and $10 for Harvard undergraduates. Parking will be available at the Broadway Garage on Felton Street between Cambridge Street and Broadway.