SANTA CRUZ, CA—-The Cabrillo Festival tossed out a few curve-balls in one concert, with good old romantic, programmatic sounds reveling in tone painting, all from composers averaging under 40 years of age. After celebrating the avant-garde, why not a little stylistic retrospection for a change?

            Among the best of these was “Abstractions” by the English composer turned New Yorker, Anna Clyne, running close to 20 minutes and serving as the grand finale of the Aug. 11 evening. Clyne might just be the best tranquilizer this side of a pharmacy. The shimmering subtleties  she evoked from the Cabrillo orchestra tried to match sonically five nonrepresentational paintings in a Baltimore museum. Let me count the ways:

—resonating contrasts, such as fast string figures offset by sustained brass tones, and soft flutes offset by pedal-points in the bass;

—sustained notes, against fast runs on cellos’ major triads;

—deployment  of pigtailing woodwinds, without brass intrusions.

These were particularly effective, though the audience could never see the museum images themselves in order to pair the impressions.

            The youngest of the creators, Peter S. Shin, 26, produced a seven-minute “Hypercolor” in his festival commission. Here he cleverly dealt with sleeplessness. A group of strings went up the major scale, like you counting sheep in order to sleep—don’t we all turn to some similar desperate trick? Each time, before completing the octave, they are shot down by the brutish musicians of the Insomnia world on the other side. I think the beast Insomnia won emphatically.

            More tone painting came from Sean Shepherd’s “Melt,” which portrayed drops of water in the mountains becoming elements of glacier, eventually flowing to the sea.

            The sea was much more restive in the coastal portrayals of “Liguria” on the Italian coast, by Andrea Tarrodi, in which you might have sensed a glint or two of Debussy as waves surged, all but submerging us listeners, stranded without a single life jacket in the house.

            At quite another extreme was New Yorker John Corigliano’s Piano Concerto of 1968, subsequently revised. The piece glistened  with twelve-tone atonality in vogue at the time, softened in spots with tonality and repeated themes. Corigliano also recycled some of the themes of the four-movement opus in the finale, reminiscent of the vogue in French 19th-century works. It was the longest piece of the night, featuring the brutishly difficult virtuosity of the piano part rendered with clarity by Philip Edward Fisher.

            All of the composers save Tarrodi appeared and spoke briefly about their selection. By far the oldest was Corigliano, fit and articulate while in no way reflecting that he’s already 80. Maybe the agony of composing, along with attendant insomnia, is a secret of longevity!

            Though the program  was quite retro, it allowed Music Director Cristian Macelaru to demonstrate his sensitive stick work on the podium, eliciting some dazzling-shimmering effects from the impressive young festival orchestra. I am now  a believer in his eloquence and hard-soft versatility.

            Some of the composers to their credit attempted some unorthodox sounds, such as scraping on the cymbals. While one could see these, but as always, they were nearly impossible to hear unless you were in that vast  percussion-section platform yourself.

            The trusty 1940-era Civic Auditorium, Cabrillo’s home, remains a problem and a major safety hazard for the seats not on the flat floor; these constitute the majority of the capacity. The steep stairways without railings are dangerous, not allowed in halls built today. Despite the architects’ PR back then about “perfect acoustics,” the decades of Cabrillo music have shown otherwise. A much needed push toward a major renovation (including seismic retrofits, which would have been very welcome before the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake) is underway, via friendsofthecivic.org . But raising some $20 million for the cause in a city of merely 64,000 or so is a true challenge.

            Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in come-as-you-are orchestral concerts at the Santa Cruz (CA) Civic Auditorium Aug. 3-12. For info: (831) 426-6966, or go online. www.cabrillomusic.org 

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