2026 Program Guide | Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

CABRILLO MUSIC.ORG 51 cheeky, and impetuous passage of the woodwinds, before handing over the baton to the strings, which begin the second part. The throbbing pentatonic melody structures the second part (a kind of rapid and optimistic tremor), which accumulates melodic energy starting from unison and passing through intervals and chords, until it bursts forth with a undulating melody of trumpets and horns. The structures alternate three times and are enriched each time with a new orchestration, but it is the metric that gives the feeling of ambiguity here, some instruments seeming to adopt the binary meter, others the ternary one. In fact, it's an auditory illusion that I specifically created through extremely elaborate and precise writing. The third movement begins with reprises of the initial gestural theme of the violins, but it takes a different path, accumulating in the area of homophony and leaving room for percussion solos. Then a melodic theme from the oboe opens a two-measure harmonic ostinato that begins to enrich itself more and more. The families of instruments begin to stand out gradually: oboes, flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trombones, tuba, strings, trumpets, percussion. Sections of increasingly rapid rhythms succeed each other, until we encounter familiar characters from the first part appearing again. Everything accelerates immeasurably, with the role of percussion and brass becoming decisive. A condensed reprise of thematic ideas concludes the section before a nervous and impatient coda, seemingly placed between the human and the mechanical. A central C focuses the entire unfolding, which concludes in an apodictic and firmmanner closing the entire thematic-narrative development of the concert. The work is dedicated to the conductor Cristian Măcelaru. — DAN DEDIU The Twenty-Fourth Season: July 17—August 8, 2026 TICKETS ON SALE NOW Concerts, master-classes, free performances, lectures, & more 3 weeks of world-class chamber music with over 40 renowned artists musicatmenlo.org 650-331-0202 Menlo School 50 Valparaiso Ave. Atherton, CA 94027