Musician takes on two roles
Daniel Cummings to act as both conductor and pianist during concert
Juggling double duty as both conductor and keyboardist dates back to the Baroque. Conductor and pianist Daniel Cummings will demonstrate that tradition at the New Mexico Philharmonic Neighborhood Concert at First United Methodist Church Feb. 8.
“You just really treat it like chamber music,” said Cummings, the church’s music ministry director and organist. The church’s Chancel Choir will join the philharmonic on Haydn’s “Missa Sancti Nicolai” at the end of the concert. Cummings is the soloist on Bach’s Piano Concerto No. 4 for Piano and Strings in A Major.
“The Baroque concertos are very much chamber music,” Cummings said. “Most of the time, it would have been the composer at the keyboard leading it. You listen for the articulation of the ensemble and the phrasing; you just get all that to agree to present a united picture to the listener.”
“From the point of craftsmanship, it’s exquisitely put together,” he continued. “It’s just joyful and fun and it’s in that wonderful, joyous key of A major.”
The concert will open with Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 in A Major, a popular early work.
“It’s one of my favorites,” Cummings said. “You can tell he’s sort of just learning his craft. He’s listening to what other composers are doing. The musical ideas are wonderful. You can hear that he’s been listening to Haydn, he’s playing around with
contrasts in dynamics, which is something you hear in the Mannheim school. They’re taking the old Baroque methods and using the counterpoint in a symphonic form.”
Toward the end of the 18th century, the Mannheim school introduced a number of novel ideas into the orchestral music of the time: sudden crescendos and diminuendos.
The concluding Haydn Mass was written for the name day of Prince Nicolai, his employer, in 1772 in 6/4 time.
“It gives it this long, lyrical quality,” Cummings said. The Mass is often performed on Christmas Eve.
“It gives this idea of crisp snow outside and a service lit by candlelight,” he added.
Cummings returned to New Mexico from Los Angeles three years ago after earning his doctoral degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has penned film scores, concerti for piano and clarinet, choral works, songs and more than 100 arrangements of hymns and folk songs for various ensembles and singers. He was a conducting assistant to John Mauceri of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and served as rehearsal pianist for its production of “Sunset Boulevard.” He also worked as music director and arranger of the UCLA Carol Burnett Awards.
In New Mexico, Cummings serves as pianist for the New Mexico Symphonic Chorus and teaches piano and composition at the New Mexico School of Music. He also is the resident music director for Landmark Musical Productions.