Brian Rudman: Emasculated town hall organ strikes only dud note

Just when it looked like the week couldn't get any gloomier, what with the doom-mongering politicians, the law and order marchers and the endless rain, along came the Auckland Philharmonia with a great burst of sunshine.

The politicians might well be right when they say the country is off to the Third World in a handcart, but Thursday night's performance of Mahler's monumental Resurrection Symphony shows that at least we're doing it with style and panache.

It wasn't just the music, lush and dramatic as it is, that cheered, it was also the fact that we as a community have the talent within to produce a 112-person orchestra, two world class local soloists and to host a 160-voice choir - the combined forces of Tower Voices New Zealand, the Tower New Zealand Youth Choir and the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir.

A city that can turn on a show like last Thursday's concert must have got something right, whatever the politicians might say to the contrary.

The only thing letting the side down on Thursday was the poor old town hall organ. It has only a few bars to contribute towards the end of the symphony when it joins with all the other performers in a roof-raising climax.

With its impressive pipes arrayed across the back of the hall, it certainly looked the part. But sadly, all this once mighty king of the beasts was capable of, was a well- meaning rumble or three. Then it collapsed back into its sick bed.

When I was kid, a blast from this organ was enough to shut up a whole hall-full of chattering youngsters. The low resonating pedal notes got the old soft tissue jiggling every bit as effectively as one of Jonah Lomu's in-car boom boxes. No longer.

In the early 1970s the old lion was emasculated, on the advice of the local organ enthusiasts, in a bid to make it more "authentic". A gift of newspaperman Sir Henry Brett in 1910, when the hall first opened, it was, in its heyday, a big, grunty instrument of the late Romantic era.

In need of repairs by 1970, the local organ community persuaded the council to rebuild it in the baroque style - which meant backdating it a century or two, and ending up with a strange, gutless hybrid which was not very good for anything.

The obvious chance to repair the damage and restore it to its full grandeur came in the mid-1990s with the $34 million rebuild and earthquake-proofing of the full town hall. Strangely, the bureaucrats and politicians refused. They argued privately that the public would not wear the additional $2 million involved.

I doubt whether anyone would have noticed the difference between $34 million and $36 million. Most people, I suspect, assumed - if they thought of it at all - that the organ had been included in the rebuild. It wasn't.

Now it's catch-up time. A year ago the previous city council agreed to spend $1 million on organ renovations. But only if organ supporters matched this with an equal amount. Heading the rebuild campaign is retired city councillor Doug Astley and city organist, John Wells. Their aim is to build a brand new instrument in the original style.

Now you'd think that a council that in quick succession has found ways of drip-feeding first $260,000, then $650,000, then $120,000 to the America's Cup, could find a way of coming up with the extra $1 million needed for this integral part of the town hall, but it hasn't. Instead it's made overtures to the ASB charitable trusts for a sizeable grant.

The ASB trusts will not give grants directly to the city council so the council has now begun moves to set up a charitable trust and transfer ownership of the organ to this body. That way, the ASB trusts will feel able - if they so decide - to donate.

If these trusts do not come to the party, or their grant falls short of the required balance, let's hope the council stops mucking around and stumps up the difference. It's not as though restoring the organ is a luxury. It's been an integral part of the town hall since it opened. Any money spent now is only money that should have been budgeted for and spent seven years ago during the hall renovations.