Cabrillo Festival opens with a bang

One recurring thumbprint of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music under longtime Music Director Marin Alsop is the sheer level of energy on display. Alsop favors music that packs a wallop — rhythmically, dynamically, even theatrically — and she gets performances out of the festival’s orchestra that reflect that sort of razzmatazz.

This year’s opening salvo, a pair of high-powered concerts given over the weekend in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, could have been designed to illustrate that point. Even the weaker works on the schedule tended to be mostly big and muscular in their approach, and the successful ones were practically bursting with ideas.