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Alice Tully Hall のPipe Organ の復帰? [音楽時評]

今年の2月に,New York の優れた室内楽ホールAlice Tully Hall が,予定(昨年秋)より遅れて改築が完成し,2月22日に再開されて優れた音質,音響効果が復活したと書きましたが,1つ経済危機と関わって残された課題がありました.

それはホールのパイプオルガンが未だ預け先から戻っていないことです.そして,一部に,経費的な問題からもう戻す必要はないのではないかという声が上がっていることに,強い懸念が表明されています.                                                                  New York は教会等には立派なパイプオルガンがあるのですが,コンサートホールでパイプオルガンがあるところがないのだそうです.                                                    そして,何よりもこのホールがその名前を冠した寄贈者Alice Tully が,パイプオルガンを追加寄贈してそれに強いこだわりをいだいていたということがあるのだそうです.

そうした必要論と不必要論とが交錯する中で,New York州北部の貯蔵先から運搬して再設置するのに18週間必要で,そんなに長期間ホールを閉鎖できないし,経費の捻出法がないというのが主要な論点になっています.                                                             しかし,その点について,the organ’s maker, Kuhn Organ Builders of Männedorf, Switzerland, said that reinstallation would take 18 weeks but indicated that the hall would be out of action for only two to three weeks. The contract put the cost of removal at $185,000 and cleaning and reinstallation at $875,000, excluding taxes, transportation, materials and other expenses. と設置施工者がいっているそうで,$1million なら何とかなるのではないかということで,取りあえず今年は無理でも来年の夏がチャンスだということに落ち着きそうだということが報じられています.

詳しくは,長文ですが,TheNewYorkTimes の記事を参照下さい.

 

At Tully Hall, Worry Over the Pipe Organ’s Return

By DANIEL J. WAKIN   Published: April 13, 2009

Alice Tully Hall is sparkling in the first months after its renovation. But a hole gapes underneath the glossy surface. The hall’s organ, a personal gift of Miss Tully herself, remains absent, dismantled and resting in limbolike storage in upstate New York.

The delay in returning the organ has raised the alarm among some organists. In particular, the chairman of the Juilliard School’s organ department, Paul Jacobs, and the organ’s curator, Peter Batchelder, have gone public with worries that Lincoln Center may secretly want to wash its hands of the organ.

“Why would they not have returned the instrument when they reopened the doors of Alice Tully Hall?” Mr. Jacobs, a prominent and respected performer, said in an interview. “The question that needs to be asked is, ‘Is it Lincoln Center’s intention that the organ not be returned?’ ”

According to Lincoln Center officials, the answer is a simple no: the organ, in fact, will be returned.

“I don’t think anybody should be nervous,” said Kerry A. Madden, Lincoln Center’s vice president for concert halls and operations. “We’re trying to juggle a number of issues.” He said the goal was to return the organ to the hall, which has a space waiting for it, in the summer of 2010. Officials were trying to find a time to schedule the installation, he said. But he acknowledged that there was no money budgeted for its return.

An organless Tully means that New York has no major concert hall with a pipe organ, bucking a nationwide trend. Major concert halls have been built with fine instruments in recent years in Nashville; Orange County, Calif.; Philadelphia; and Los Angeles, among other sites.

It means that a major repertory of works from Bach to Messiaen won’t be heard by Tully audiences, unless played on portable or electric organs, considered lesser solutions by many experts.

Friends of Miss Tully, a philanthropist who paid for the hall named after her and who died in 1993, said abandoning the organ would insult her memory.

“It meant everything to her,” said Robert White, a tenor who was close to Miss Tully.

This particular organ is considered a versatile instrument that would benefit from the newly renovated hall’s livelier acoustics. Around the time of its dedication, in 1975, no less an organ maestro than the great E. Power Biggs gave his blessing.

“Here truly, and at last, for New York is an instrument ‘built the way God intended organs to be built!’ ” he wrote to Miss Tully.

James McGarry, Miss Tully’s lawyer and president of the Alice Tully Foundation, said: “It’s important because Alice Tully wanted it there. She was the motivator, and spent considerable monies to have that organ installed.” He said Lincoln Center officials had assured him that the organ would be returned.

The foundation gave $16 million toward the $159 million renovation of Tully Hall. Lincoln Center has asked for another gift, but no decision has been made, Mr. McGarry said.

But Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Batchelder say Lincoln Center’s statements to them, a seeming inattention to the issue and what they call a recent history of disregard for the organ all point in a different direction.

“It is no secret that the organ has not been taken seriously in the life of Lincoln Center,” Mr. Jacobs said. “What is the point of having an organ sit in the hall when they don’t care about it? The organ is not an obscure instrument. It’s not like we’re dealing with the banjo or accordion, with all due respect to those instruments.”

Mr. Jacobs said he was somewhat reassured when told of Lincoln Center’s statements after he raised the issue, but added, “We’ll believe it when we see it.”

Mr. Batchelder, who has tuned and taken care of the organ since 1979, said Lincoln Center officials had chafed at the cost and the down time needed to tend to the instrument.

“Organs are just a big pain in the neck for hall managers,” he said. “They take up a lot of space, they make a lot of noise and they cost money.” He estimated the cost of putting in a new organ at $3 million to $4 million.

John Weaver, the former chairman of the organ departments at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and for 35 years the organist at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, said that not restoring the Tully Hall organ would be an “easy way out” for the management, and that “I think it would be a tragedy.”

Organ enthusiasts, a passionate group, may have reason to be suspicious. Jane Moss, the vice president for programming at Lincoln Center, acknowledged that organ music was not a priority at Tully Hall. “It’s a specialty item,” she said, also pointing out that New York is full of excellent organs in churches, with plenty of organ concerts.

Other evidence cited by those critical of Lincoln Center was an e-mail message from a Juilliard official, distributed to colleagues, quoting Mr. Madden as saying that there was no budget for the organ’s refurbishment and installation, and that the hall could not be shut down for the five months it would take to put it back.

A draft contract with the organ’s maker, Kuhn Organ Builders of Männedorf, Switzerland, said that reinstallation would take 18 weeks but indicated that the hall would be out of action for only two to three weeks. The contract put the cost of removal at $185,000 and cleaning and reinstallation at $875,000, excluding taxes, transportation, materials and other expenses.

The contract said the organ was to have been returned by last October, in time for a fall opening of the hall. But construction delays pushed the opening off until Feb. 22, Lincoln Center officials said, and the organ installation was then planned for this summer. But Lincoln Center then decided that was too soon after the opening “to take the hall offline,” said a Lincoln Center spokeswoman, Eileen McMahon. So the organ’s installation was delayed until the summer of 2010.

Mr. Madden said the year’s delay would allow construction dust to settle so that the pipes and mechanism would not be damaged. Ms. McMahon and Mr. Madden were unable to explain why dust was not a factor in the original schedule.

Not all organists are concerned. Kent Tritle, the New York Philharmonic’s organist and the music director at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue, said he understood the delay, given the volume of work performed in the refurbishment of Tully Hall. He said he was confident the organ would eventually return to its rightful place.

“I’m very excited about that,” he said. “It’s what Miss Tully would have wanted. The city of New York deserves a concert hall with a real pipe organ.”


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