For several reasons, tomorrow night should be something of an event in the current New York season. Amid the vastness of the Drill Hall at the venerable Park Avenue Armory — seen above in 1881, with Leopold Damrosch at the podium — George Steel will conduct the Vox Vocal Ensemble and the Gotham City Orchestra in Stravinsky's three sacred masterpieces: the Symphony of Psalms, the Mass, and the Requiem Canticles. It's the central offering in Miller Theatre's Stravinsky Festival, which has been a banquet of riches so far; New Yorkers are getting to hear various Stravinsky pieces that come along exceedingly rarely (the Septet, Concertino, Three Japanese Lyrics, etc.). Performances of Requiem Canticles are grievously infrequent, of the Mass more or less nonexistent, so the composer's fans will be out in force. Also, this will be the first public presentation in the Drill Hall since recent renovations made the space suitable for music. Various bigwigs will undoubtedly be in attendance to assess the acoustics and the ambience. Coming to the hall this summer is Bernd Alois Zimmermann's colossal, wild, and astounding opera Die Soldaten, courtesy of the Lincoln Center Festival; a DVD of the production, which originated at the Ruhr Triennale, raises expectations high. New York City Opera plans to stage Messiaen's Saint Francis at the Armory in December 2009.
