SAN JUAN BAUTISTA — The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music wrapped up here Sunday with a formidable program in the historic Mission. The place was redolent of frankincense — Latin Mass had ended only an hour before the music began — and the festival orchestra played like a bunch of sharpshooters under the baton of Marin Alsop.
I caught the afternoon performance — the program also repeated in the evening — and again was bowled over by this orchestra’s steady way of rising to the challenges of this summer event. How it learns such quantities of intricate new music so well in so short a time is one of those mysteries. Clearly, the players covet their annual Cabrillo immersion; the festival’s hothouse commitment to expanding classical repertory is unique, and the musicians keep returning each year, even though payment is a mere $64 a day.
There are other payoffs, like getting the chance to perform with Sunday’s soloist, cellist Wendy Sutter. She played Philip Glass’s Cello Concerto, a piece that in its best moments suggests the balance, logic and all-knowing essential-ness of J.S. Bach.
And from the opening arpeggios, there was Sutter’s earthy sound, spiraling down, down, down to loamy notes. Part of the uniqueness of Cabrillo is that the composers tend to be on hand for the performances, and there in the eighth row was Glass — in their extra-musical lives, he and Sutter are partners — looking transfixed.
Sutter’s instrument, built circa 1620 by Nicolo Amati, is decorated with images of angels and a harp. She played it with gravity and freedom, with broad-lined lyricism and the composure of a long-distance athlete.
For its first movement and a half, the concerto, composed in 2001, is scored with quiet restraint, painted with vivid detail. Glass lets the soloist dance: here with a bassoon, there with a muted trombone. And Sutter danced. Even in the final movement — where Glass gives in to his familiar and overblown pinwheeling effects, fit for film — she tamed the orchestral beast, punching out a throaty five-beat ostinato figure and making one ballet-like pass after the next, like a musical matador.
After a short intermission, there was George Walker’s “Foils for Orchestra (Hommage a Saint George),” painting a picture of the sword-wielding saint’s mythic battle with the dragon. Composed in 2006, it is a rock-solid work, massive and confident, like a virtuoso sermon.
More sweeping and varied was Pierre Jalbert’s “In Aeternam,” a memorial to his niece, who died at birth. It begins with a piccolo’s fragment of melody — a melody stopped short — over the soft drone of orchestra. Here and throughout, Jalbert’s orchestration is commandingly specific: soft shivers of strings, moans of low winds.
“In Aeternam” (Latin for “In Eternity”) is an arresting crystallization of grief, the freezing failure to “process” a turn of events — and the need to move on and feel the beat of life. It has feverish moments; Alsop and the orchestra controlled them with stenciled precision.
Earlier in the weekend, on Saturday at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, there was more, including composer Kevin Puts’s valiant solo performance in his own piano concerto, “Night,” a work of beauty and economy, for all its virtuoso demands. There was also “Dalliance” by Sean Hickey, dusky and fragrant with firefly detail. And there was John Adams’ “City Noir,” which claims inspiration from Ellington and film noir, but which bears Adams’ wildly idiosyncratic stamp. It’s thick, tumultuous, nocturnal and loony, and I like it better with every hearing.
Tune in next August when Alsop returns for her 20th season.
Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069.
