OC LIVE! : High Drama : Cumming Is Making Sure His First ‘Messiah’ Has the Might Stuff

Edward Cumming, assistant Pacific Symphony conductor, will lead the orchestra in his first “Messiah” on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. So it’s got to be just right.

“My chief concern is that the piece reflects the fact that Handel is a dramatic composer,” Cumming said recently. “He was writing operas before oratorios, and we have the English audiences becoming increasingly disenchanted with operas to thank for this piece. Thank God they did!”

Handel, he said, is different from Bach--his great, early 18th century contemporary--in this regard.

“Handel’s more interested in achieving a certain kind of gesture through different musical styles. Take the ‘Hallelujah!’ Chorus. If that were written by Bach, it would probably have been mostly a polyphonic work. It does have fugal passages, but it also has moments when everybody is doing the exact same thing, because it’s very important to [Handel], that we know what he’s telling us, the words of scripture.”

In fact, Cumming continued, Handel is “constantly accessing different styles.”

“Even the recitatives are not all the same, not cut-and-dried cello and continuo. He’s constantly experimenting and will mix them up. He’s really going through the drama of the texts. And to think he wrote this in 21 days!”

A native of Oakland, Cumming, 38, was appointed the Pacific’s assistant conductor in 1993. He leads the orchestra’s family concerts, and serves as music director of the Pacific Symphony Institute at Cal State Fullerton.

“I love performing with children for children,” he said. “That audience is a lot of fun. [The ‘Messiah’] is a different kind of beast. Many people come to this concert as the only classical concert of their year. That’s another reason I want to go for the dramatic aspect.”

Though Cumming has led many of the choruses in separate performances, he has never done a complete performance. Technically, he will not lead a complete performance this time either, because he’s dropping several sections because of time constraints.

Gone are “But Thou didst not leave His soul in hell,” “All they that see Him, laugh Him to scorn” and “He trusted in God that He would deliver him.” But added are “The Lord gave the word,” ’How beautiful are the feet of them” and “Their sound is gone out into all lands,” which have not been sung in recent Pacific Symphony performances.

“I have gone through every single orchestral part,” the conductor said. “I don’t want to leave much to chance. It’s been a wonderful exercise, not only seeing what has been done before, because these are the orchestra’s parts, but also considering what changes are involved.

“I’ve sat over a measure for a whole hour figuring out what I’m going to do. It’s been a labor of love. There were times when I sat over the notes and started crying from the sheer beauty of it. Or even laughing. This piece is one of those works you can keep coming back to and find more and more in it.”

Cumming will be conducting an orchestra playing on modern instruments, and he doesn’t want to get caught up in the “authenticity” debate.

“I want the music to speak in our time,” he said. “If it’s ‘authentic’ and it puts us to sleep, or uses modern instruments and puts us to sleep, it doesn’t much matter. It’s the same result. The important thing is that whatever prism the conductor has decided to look through, the performance has to be one that lives, that has a musical life to it.”

* What: Edward Cumming conducts the Pacific Symphony in Handel’s “Messiah.”

* When: 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

* Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

* Whereabouts: Exit the San Diego (405) Freeway at Bristol Street and go north. Turn right onto Town Center Drive.

* Wherewithal: $15 to $45.

* Where to call: (714) 556-2787.

* MUSIC LISTINGS, FXX