“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.
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