Concert notes. (Music).

The 2002 Season at the Tanglewood Music Center, Lenox, Massachusetts

Tanglewood, in western Massachusetts, has long been known as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it has been the model for a number of other summer musical performance sites around the country. Yet, though thousands continue to gather in the cavernous Koussevitzky Music Shed and on the spacious lawns outside for weekend concerts by the Boston Symphony (and, occasionally, other orchestras), the concert life is only one part of the Tanglewood experience, and increasingly--despite the numbers--a less critically important one.

The teaching aspect of Tanglewood was present from the beginning, thanks to the ideas and influence of Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the orchestra at the time the Boston Symphony decided to perform summers in Tanglewood. Teaching another generation of performers and composers was, to Koussevitzky, an obligation, not a privilege. In the long history of the Symphony, two specifics stand out: the emergence of Leonard Bernstein as both composer and conductor, and the first American performance of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes (conducted by Bernstein), which was a Koussevitzky commission. This last inaugurated the years of Boris Goldovsky's opera group at Tanglewood, which was--with the later establishment of the Santa Fe Opera--instrumental in both training young American singers and establishing summer opera as a viable cultural attraction.

In addition to the training of young players, singers, and composers, there has always been an emphasis on new music, thanks to the continuing support of the Chicago wine merchant Paul Fromm, and the early August Fromm Week was a focus for some of the more daring departures in contemporary composition. Since Fromm's death, his Foundation has continued to support the endeavor. In addition, this year saw the inauguration of the New Fromm Players, a small group of distinguished alumni of the Tanglewood Music Center who will concentrate in new works by students and faculty.

The pedagogical side of Tanglewood became especially newsworthy a few years ago when the Boston Symphony's Music Director, Seiji Ozawa, decided to take direct charge of the program and to reintegrate members of the orchestra into the teaching. This led to some resignations--and to an inordinate amount of publicity--but today the transition runs smoothly. About half the members of the orchestra take part in some aspect of the teaching process, which involves auditions of applicants throughout the United States. Orchestra members travel to up to eight cities for these auditions. From an application pool of 1500, each summer about 150 students are chosen, of which about one hundred are in the orchestra, with eight composers, four to eight conductors, twenty-five to thirty singers, and several pianists, with the average age at about twenty-four.

The programs of the Tanglewood Music Center, both public and private, are under the director Ellen Highstein and her staff, and they form one part of the overall Tanglewood summer season, which includes the Shed concerts (by the Boston Symphony, various visiting orchestras, and the Boston Pops), as well as recitals and programs during the week by visiting soloists and chamber groups.

This last expansion of the Tanglewood season has been made possible by the construction and opening (in 1996) of Seiji Ozawa Hall, an eleven-hundred-seat facility (with a back opening for lawn occupants) in the general shoebox shape of Symphony Hall in Boston. Many listeners prefer the intimacy of Ozawa Hall to the Shed, and the Ozawa Hall offerings have developed a loyal audience. The year-round nature of music performance in New York (including the Mostly Mozart concerts) has also allowed Tanglewood to piggyback on soloists and groups that would normally not be available for touring to western Massachusetts in the summer, and this has ...