Assistant conductor to make her BSO debut

Shi-Yeon Sung, who will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra, says "the situation is changing" for female conductors.

Three years ago, Marin Alsop made her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at Tanglewood. It was a sort of homecoming for Alsop, who had trained with Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, but it was also an event with symbolic importance. Alsop is the only female music director of a major US orchestra - the Baltimore Symphony - and her appearance with the BSO at its hallowed summer home was a sign of her achievement in a position that is still overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Another crack will appear in that glass ceiling Sunday afternoon, when Shi-Yeon Sung makes her BSO debut. The first female assistant conductor in the orchestra's 127-year history, Sung will lead a program of 19th-century staples: Schumann's "Manfred" Overture and Piano Concerto (with soloist Garrick Ohlsson) and Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony.

Sung, a 32-year-old native of South Korea, began her assistantship with music director James Levine this past season. It followed closely on her victory at the Sir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition in Frankfurt, in 2006. Last year she took second prize at the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg. (First prize was not awarded.)

Like many conductors, Sung began her musical life as a pianist, having started at 4. "I can't remember why, but one day I came in from outside and asked my mother to learn piano," she wrote during an e-mail interview.

Almost immediately after obtaining a degree in piano performance at the Berlin University of the Arts, Sung began training as a conductor. She was inspired by seeing a video of the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a Brahms symphony. "For me it was fascinating to see the interaction between 100 people with one conductor - not only technically but mentally," she wrote.

Asked about the challenges of being a maestra in a world of maestros, she admitted the difficulty of the situation, pointing out that 50 years ago there were almost no women playing in orchestras. "Nowadays, nobody says 'a woman musician' in an orchestra. And the situation [with conductors] is changing," she wrote, noting not only Alsop but the Australian opera conductor Simone Young and JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

"I really hope that soon I won't get this question any more," she added.

News of Levine's season-ending surgery caught her off guard, as it did everyone at Tanglewood. Yet Sung has little time to be sentimental: She will replace Levine in two pieces at Thursday's all-Elliott Carter concert of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music: the Horn Concerto and the Three Illusions for Orchestra.

Commenting on the legendary difficulty of Carter's music, Sung drew attention to the interaction between pitches and rhythmic patterns in his pieces. "The challenge for me is to understand the big picture behind those notes and rhythms in a short period of time," she wrote. "But the orchestra knows these pieces very well, and that helps a lot.

"For me, the Carter festival was inconceivable without [Levine], but I am sure we will all give our best and keep strong during his absence."

Asked what she thought has been the best thing about the Tanglewood experience, she responded, "The atmosphere. The mix of nature and music attracts a lot of young people - even those that usually don't go to concerts like to come to Tanglewood. Isn't it wonderful?"

Information: 888-266-1200, tanglewood.org

Monadnock 'Modern'

The Monadnock Music Festival can be counted on for inventive programs throughout the summer, and one of the most promising is scheduled for tomorrow night. Titled "The Birth of the Modern," it juxtaposes a violin sonata by George Antheil and a duo for violin and viola by Arthur Lourié with Schoenberg's epoch-making string sextet "Verklärte Nacht." Dvorak's stormy F-minor Trio adds some warmth to the affair.

At Peterborough Town House, Peterborough, N.H.; 603-924-7610, monadnockmusic.org