San Juan Bautista - The closing concert of the Cabrillo Festival today
celebrated light, life, angels - and music itself.  Marin Alsop presided
with simple, unpretentious authority over a delightfully successful concert
of mutually exclusive elements fused smoothly and powerfully:  contemporary
music that's both accessible and memorable, beautiful and substantial.

The US premiere of James MacMillan's 1999 Second Symphony occupied the
anchor position in a program opening with the West Coast premiere of
Christopher Rouse's 2000 "Rapture," and ending with Einojuhani Rautavaara's
Seventh Symphony ("Angel of Light"), a seven-year-old work, which has
already become a modern classic.

Rouse introduced his work, acknowledging that he is known for his
preoccupation with sorrow and grief, but "Rapture" is a turning point at
50 that "man need not live by dread alone." In the first of three flawless
performances, the festival orchestra played the tough, bravura piece
superbly.  The usual percussive-brassy Rouse sound - more completely tonal
here than ever before - spirals heavenwards, gathering speed, becoming
larger, broader, not just adding volume, at least to the mid-point of the
13-minute-long work.  It is then that there is a brilliant shaft of light
piercing through the music, similar to the moment in Elgar's "The Dream of
Gerontius" when the hero sees the face of God.  From this great high point,
there is a steep decline in the music's quality as Respighiesque gigantism
takes over, volume replacing substance.

MacMillan, 41, attending Cabrillo in person for the first time (with his
wife, 8-year-old twins and a 12-year-old daughter), was gracious in his
remarks, thanking this "magnificent, happy little festival" for championing
his works for years.  Although he's been conducting the Royal Scottish
National Orchestra and is the new composer/conductor of the BBC
Philharmonic, MacMillan said he was thrilled observing a "real conductor"
in Alsop.

The Second Symphony, he said, is an abstract work, quite without any
program or subtext, but he offered a few remarks about its origin.  He has
been long fascinated by Scottish poetry, MacMillan said, and the strange
relationship between the land's cold, rain, frost and melancholy on the
one hand and its strange beauty on the other.  It is in facing winter and
desolation that the inspiration is found for Scotland's poetry and his
own music - a desire for the human spirit to triumph in face of adversity.
Lofty sentiments such as these may sound awfully hollow when they are
followed by music that's spoken about, but does not speak for itself.  Such
was not the case here.  The Second Symphony is a masterpiece, in no need of
"explanation," and the composer's remarks simply helped approach to it on
first hearing.

What you hear the first time is an obviously great, original, powerful
piece of music and an equally clear indication that locked within is a
treasure - that it must be heard again and again.  All the usual MacMillan
characteristic appear (use of bells, bird sounds from pizzicato, dense
harmonies, gentle and powerful waves dissolving in a musical ocean), but
none calls attention to itself.

There is a coherence, an integrity to the work, which makes observation
of individual elements virtually meaningless.  The heart of the symphony,
a 13-minute unmarked middle movement between two 4-minute Adagios, is of
one piece, of one breath - cloudy, overcast light permeating the core, a
substance that cannot be expressed in words.

The wonderfully romantic Rautavaara closing the concert fit in perfectly
with the theme of light - well beyond its subtitle, the work itself is
suffused with light, a brighter, warmer one than MacMillan's, more sedate
than Rouse's.  The Seventh Symphony is lush and gorgeous throughout, but
never cheap.  It has majestic passages, reminiscent of Sibelius and, more
surprisingly, Tchaikovsky, and its third movement ("Come un sogno") begs
to be repeated, even as a great aria in an opera.

As to the performances, it's quite possible that a big permanent orchestra
may do better technically, but for dedication and passionate service of the
music, this ad-hoc band, a brief annual coming together of musicians from
around the world, cannot be surpassed.  Throughout the concert, woodwinds,
brass, percussion and concertmaster Yumi Hwang Williams gave their
remarkable best, making themselves proud, and Alsop, the composers, and
the audience very happy indeed.

Janos Gereben/SF
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