Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 28, 1994 TAG: 9404280184
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Not just because the organist and music director at Roanoke's Greene Memorial Church has been the sparkplug behind one of Virginia's longest-running and best-known church-based fine arts series.
And not just because he stubbornly continues to champion the king of instruments in an era when the organ is not exactly a mass-market item.
Take Friday night's concert at the church with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, for example: Cummins wanted to celebrate the renovation of Greene Memorial's Skinner organ with a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony. But to do it right he needed a minimum of 60 players, and there simply isn't room in the church's nave to hold an orchestra that big.
So Cummins recruited volunteers who will temporarily remove some pews and build an extension of the chancel, which will jut over the steps to the communion rail. Cummins and the organ console will perch atop the temporary structure, and enough musicians will be crammed in on all sides to get the lush Romantic sound that the composer envisioned for the piece.
There's a lot of history behind the Greene Memorial organ. Installed in 1926 by the famous American organ builder Ernest Skinner, the instrument was the gift of the same Williamson family for which Williamson Road in named.
``It's essentially an eclectic American instrument, and as such you can play almost everything on it with a reasonably authentic sound,'' said Cummins.
``You can get adequate clarity for polyphony and also the thicker kind of fuller, richer sounds for the Romantic music - and all these sounds can be worked together for contemporary music, too. If the instrument leans toward anything it's the Romantic sound.'' Which is precisely the sound Cummins wants from it Friday night.
Many of the world's great organists have played the instrument, including Simon Preston, who did the keyboard soundtrack for the film ``Amadeus.'' John Scott, the widely recorded organist of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, played his first solo concert in America at Greene Memorial, fresh from playing for the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Other star performers have included E. Power Biggs, Marie-Claire Alain, Frederick Swann and Andrew Lumsden.
The concert with the RSO and conductor Victoria Bond, which will also feature Josef Rheinberger's Concerto in G minor for Organ and Orchestra, is the culminating event in a season celebrating the Skinner organ's renovation. The work was finished last September, and Cummins did a solo recital on the refurbished instrument in October.
``Rebuilding an organ requires extreme skill and a very, very keen ear,'' said Cummins. ``There aren't an awful lot of people who are that skilled - you just can't pick up a how-to book and apply for a job. It has to be learned through an apprenticeship.''
The organ's new computer-technology console was built by the Hagerstown Organ Co. in Maryland. The precision job of re-leathering the instrument was done by R.L. Victorine and Sons of Roanoke.
The organ leathers are the hide pouches in the windchest under the toe of each pipe - nearly 2,500 in all for the Greene Memorial instrument. After thousands of hours of playing the pouches must be scraped off, the wood area cleaned and new hides glued on by hand.
Cummins said the job requires an extraordinary degree of precision. ``It can't be almost right - it has to be EXACTLY right,'' said the organist.
Friday night's concert will offer what has become a rare chance to hear the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony performed the way the composer conceived it: with organist and orchestra in the same room, playing at the same time.
It has become almost standard practice in recent years for recordings of the work to feature an orchestral part recorded minus the organ, which is later dubbed in as the soloist listens to the orchestral track through headphones and plays along with it.
``I think that's disgusting,'' said Cummins. ``The organ is in one ambience and the orchestra's in another. Maybe lots of people don't notice the difference, but it's there.''
Saint-Saen's showpiece is the apotheosis of the French Romantic style, with one of the most electrifying organ parts ever written in a symphonic context. Cummins said that concertgoers should listen in particular at two points.
``At the beginning of the Maestoso movement Saint-Saens calls for the full power of the instrument, the 32-foot bombard pipes, where you essentially have the orchestra standing on top of these great bass sounds, and it just lifts you out of your seat if it's done well.
``The other point is in the Adagio where he requests the pedal 32-foot stops and the string celeste stops. At that point the movement is transformed because of the combination of the very soft and ethereal sounds, an octave below anything in the symphony orchestra - it's magnificent,'' said Cummins.
Rheinberger's organ concerto, the other piece on the program, is also a Romantic showpiece. Though the Saint-Saens is not tremendously difficult for a professional organist, Cummins says the Rheinberger ``has lots of technical problems.''
Friday night's concert will offer concertgoers two area firsts. According to Cummins it will be the first time the Saint-Saens work will have been performed in Roanoke with a real pipe organ. And the Rheinberger concerto, said Cummins, has never been performed in the area at all.
IN CONCERT: The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and organist Richard Cummins, Friday at 8 p.m. at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church in downtown Roanoke. $20. Call 344-6225 or 343-9127.
by CNB