NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: TIMES SQUARE; Its Radio Days Over, Coda for WQXR's Cozy Auditorium

At the end of this month will be the final curtain call for the WQXR auditorium, where Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz judged the musical talents of the city's high school students, where the gospel group Take 6 gave a free concert and where Peter Schickele delighted radio listeners with the quasi-musical antics of P. D. Q. Bach. For many years, an in-house duo, Leonid Hambro and Jasche Zayde, performed regularly on a pair of pianos in the auditorium.

The auditorium, on the ninth floor of the New York Times building on West 43d Street, is being transformed into temporary office space for use by Times employees whose permanent offices are undergoing renovation, said a spokeswoman for The Times, Nancy Nielsen.

It has been almost a decade since live music was performed in the 200-seat auditorium, which has been used recently for meetings, and a weekly yoga class, of Times staff. In 1989, WQXR moved from the Times building to offices and studios on Fifth Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets in the Flatiron District.

The radio host Robert Sherman recalled that in the years before the move, when an ensemble was too large to fit into his regular WQXR studio, he would broadcast his two-hour morning show, ''The Listening Room, from the auditorium, often twice a week. His audience would consist mostly of retirees, people who worked in the Times Square neighborhood and Times employees taking an early lunch.

''Listeners loved it because they could hear what musicians had to say about the music they played,'' said Mr. Sherman, whose program was broadcast on WQXR from 1970 to 1993. ''For players, it was exposure they couldn't get any other way. The Canadian Brass even got a contract with RCA. An executive there heard them on a broadcast from the auditorium.''

''There was a parade of great artists,'' Mr. Sherman said. ''There was the Cleveland Quartet, the Canadian Brass, the Orpheus Players, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton and Odetta. We even had an organ performance. Virgil Fox brought in an electric organ, and we had a full organ recital, which was unheard of. It was a very special time.'' ERIC V. COPAGE