E-Mail This Article to a Friend Going West Tanglewood brings sweet music to the Berkshires again BY DAVID WEININGER

Whenever you start to feel that New York has it over Boston — the Yankees’ many championships, more dance, better opera, subways that run all night — just remember this: we’ve got Tanglewood. Whatever the appeal of hearing amplified operas in Central Park, the attractions of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home have it beat hands down.

The BSO’s portion of the Tanglewood season gets under way on July 5, when Kurt Masur leads the opening-night concert at the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Masur, whose BSO subscription concerts at Symphony Hall in April were well received, picks up where he left off with another Russian program: Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (with soprano Denyce Graves) and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the latter not in the familiar Ravel arrangement but in what Masur calls a more "primal and Russian" version from the 1950s by Sergei Gorchakov.

Masur returns on July 13 for Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony and the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Sarah Chang. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos will reprise his BSO successes in Falla’s opera La vida breve on July 25 and the Verdi Requiem on August 1; Neville Marriner will lead a Mendelssohn program including the complete incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream on August 22 and accompany Itzhak Perlman in the Bruch G-minor Violin Concerto on August 23. Christoph von Dohnányi, following on his sensational Symphony Hall concerts in December, makes his Tanglewood debut on August 3 with a repeat of Dvorák’s New World Symphony and the Brahms First Piano Concerto with Emanuel Ax. The now-traditional closing concert, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, will be led by James Conlon on August 24.

Focusing on the BSO, though, could give you a skewed vision of what Tanglewood is really about. For starters, the BSO programs can appear staid and conservative if you forget that orchestra and conductor here have a fraction of the rehearsal time they do in Boston. And you have to look at the many other events that go on during the summer to realize just how rich and multifaceted a musical experience Tanglewood is. Chief among these is the annual Festival of Contemporary Music, whose 2003 incarnation runs July 17 through 21 under the guidance of Robert Spano, who is perhaps Tanglewood’s most adventurous presence. This year’s offerings, an assortment of orchestral, chamber, and solo concerts, focus on three composers: George Benjamin, Jennifer Higdon, and György Ligeti, who’s celebrating his 80th birthday. Benjamin will be on hand to conduct the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in his own Palimpsest 1 & 2 on July 21, a concert that also includes Spano conducting Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra. The all-piano Fromm Concert, on July 20, will include the premiere of Benjamin’s Shadowlines and a group of Etudes by Ligeti, both played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Also on this bill, Spano and Ursula Oppens will team up for Olivier Messiaen’s ecstatic Visions de l’Amen.

And don’t forget the many chamber and solo concerts taking place in Seiji Ozawa Hall. On July 24, the great Borodin String Quartet plays Shostakovich’s Nos. 11 & 12 and Beethoven’s third Razumovsky quartet (Opus 59 No. 3). The Emerson String Quartet brings some repertoire we haven’t heard it play yet, including Janácek’s Kreutzer Quartet and Smetana’s From My Life Quartet, on July 30. Pianist Piotr Anderszewski performs Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, which he’s recorded to great acclaim, along with works by Bach on July 31.

But perhaps the most eagerly awaited concerts will be the Tanglewood Music Center’s world premieres of chamber operas by Robert Zuidam and Osvaldo Golijov in a double bill on August 10 and 11. Zuidam’s Rage d’amours is based on the story of Juana La Loca, a 16th-century Spanish queen who spent much of her reign in an insane asylum. The composer wrote the libretto himself, in old Spanish and old French. Soprano Lucy Shelton takes on the title role and TMC faculty member Stefan Asbury conducts. Golijov’s Ainadamar, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang, chronicles the great Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca just days before his murder during the Spanish Civil War. The cast includes Dawn Upshaw; Spano will conduct.

For further information about the 2003 Tanglewood season, visit www.bso.org. Tickets are available there or by calling (888) 266-1200.