Restoring a national monument

How the restored RFH organ will look (photo: Hayes Davidson Nick Rochowski)

In my last blog I described the sum of £750,000 required to refurbish the Temple organ as 'eye-watering' – and reflecting on this after posting I considered whether this made the whole business of organ refurbishment sound irrelevant, or just a bit unimportant in comparison to the devastating effect cuts have had on the Arts over recent years.

A visit to Harrison and Harrison's workshops in Durham, though, made me start thinking about heritage, culture and old-fashioned value for money, and gave me a clear illustration of how just how wide an audience these projects ultimately reach. 

My primary purpose in going up there was not to visit the bedside of the ailing Temple organ but to have a look at the second phase of the extensive refurbishment of the 7866-pipe organ of the Royal Festival Hall. It is costing £2,300,000 to encourage it into a new box - not so much walk in the park as Olympic marathon - and a sum that firmly dumps the Temple organ in small beans territory. For some reason, I find this reassuring: whatever sharp intake of breath the amounts involved in maintaining one particular organ might cause, there's always a more expensive one somewhere else - just as deserving, unique and important. It took three years to build (with, incidentally, some tangential consultancy from George Thalben-Ball, then-organist of the Temple), and since it arrived on the South Bank in 1953 as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations has only received small - although significant - modifications, cleans and overhauls. I'd love to work out what it's 'real' cost is: it has been sitting in its place for five decades, largely undemanding, and only now really needs some attention and care. On a cost-per-note basis, it's probably a far more economical creature than, say, a harpsichord or an oboe.

After the reopening of the Festival Hall in 2007 only the first third of the organ had been reinstalled (you can see the reinstallation of that section in the timelapse video below): now the second, central, section is sitting in the building-room in Durham, enveloped in scaffolding so its carers can climb in and out of it at will. The third section will be next, with the finished organ being voiced and tuned during the autumn of 2013, ready for its unveiling at the beginning of the following year (looking, hopefully, as it has been mocked-up to look above). Looking at it exposed like that, I realised it isn't so much impressive instrument as National Monument. Much like the Temple, it will be welcomed home with the sort of banners and bunting reserved for a prodigal returned. In their own individual ways, all organs are treasures, but the organ of the RFH is a concentrated illustration of that - a national monument disguised as a musical instrument. We wouldn't think twice about maintaining the heritage of Big Ben or Nelson's Column, but the scale of support needed by these instruments just seems incongruous in the context of their often impoverished custodians.

The reality, of course, high as the costs are, it's worth it to maintain these monuments and, in fact, to keep quintessentially English companies like Harrisons' alive. And so, if we don't maintain these instruments - and continue to feel a duty to maintain them - who will?

Find out more on the restoration of the RFH organ at pulloutallthestops.org