Pulling out all stops for organ fund

When you look behind the impressive facade of the Auckland Town Hall organ, you appreciate that it's a wonder the organ works as well as it does. But help is on the way, reports HEATH LEES.

Today, when City Organist John Wells says he feels like a million dollars, he means it. A few days ago the Auckland City Council allocated a million dollars in the budget round towards the restoration of the organ in the Town Hall. The amount will need to matched by another $1 million being raised by the organ's supporters, but Wells is confident this can be done.

"The great thing is that the need is out in the open," he says. "When the Town Hall was renovated, everyone thought the organ had been completely redone, too. But all it got was a dust-up and a paint-around. In fact, as soon as the Town Hall reopened, the organ began to give trouble again, and extra money had to be spent straight away to make sure it wouldn't fail completely at awkward moments."

Out front, the view from the auditorium is impressive, with the big silver pipes reaching the roof and the warm lighting making an attractive setting for audiences to enjoy.

Behind the scenes, it's a different matter. Greeting the eye at the first timid step into the organ chamber are worn and perished leather patches, cable jungles, obsolete switches, wooden joints barely held together by layers of adhesive tape - the wonder is that the organ goes at all.

The biggest complaint, says Wells, is that the organ simply doesn't have the "grunt" to match the demands of orchestras and choirs, which can so easily swamp it. "People have always called the organ the king of instruments," he says, ruefully. "It should crown a performance. At the moment, this king is abdicating whenever there's any real competition."

Wells has been researching the organ, and puts the results into its true New Zealand context. It was built in England in 1910, he explains, and shipped out to what was then a new Town Hall for Auckland.

With more than 100 stops and 5000 pipes, the organ weighs about 18 tonnes. It has enough wiring to stretch from Bluff to Cape Reinga six times.

After Wells was appointed City Organist in 1998, the move to restore or to renew the organ gathered momentum. A report from an international team of experts chorused in perfect unison that the present organ had had its day, and the best option was now to build "a brand new instrument in the original style". Where possible, parts of the old instrument were to be used in the rebuild.

Surprisingly, many of the parts are no longer in the instrument. A rejig in the late 1960s stripped much of the old civic grandeur from the organ to provide a leaner, Baroque type of sound. Over the years, some stops, pipes and attachments have gradually drifted around the country, and will need smart detective work to find again.

"A few of the old stops can be found stuck on the walls of choir practice rooms - they make excellent coat hangers," says Wells. "And there are whole ranks of pipes stored away in other churches in the city, waiting for a good home. Back in the Town Hall would be the best home of all."

But no matter what, the result will be a proper rebirth for New Zealand's largest organ. The assurance of that first million dollars means that after all the homework, we can really begin. It's a dream becoming a reality."