We are very pleased to have been awarded the contract to refurbish the Grand Organ at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The organ is to be taken out of use at the end of 2001 and is scheduled for completion by January 2004. The following description of the organ and the work to be carried out on it has been prepared by the consultant for the project, Ian Bell.

At the time that Henry Willis built the Royal Albert Hall organ, in 1871, it was the largest in the world. It had 111 stops distributed over four manuals and pedals.

The Great fluework was daringly arranged on display in the central arch of the case, with Pedal upperwork in the two arches to either side. The Great reeds were on the upper level with the Swell, again on two levels, in a separate chamber behind. The case pipes, in 90% tin, were principally taken from the two 32-foot metal Pedal stops - the Contra Violone on the left, and the Double Open Diapason on the right, with the Great 16ft Gamba in the centre.

All of that remains very similar today, though other departments have changed. In 1871 the Choir organ was on two levels to the right of the Great, facing inwards, and the Solo similarly arranged to the left. Trackers connected the various soundboards to pneumatic machines where circular purses, fed by large diameter tubes, pulled open the pallets. The console was provided with 8 thumb pistons to each manual and six combination pedals to the pedal organ, and each stop-rod operated a three-way valve which delivered either pressure or vacuum to the single large purse connected to each slider. The wind-pressure was raised by steam engines in the blowing room below the organ, driving six feeders. The high pressure was provided by two blowing cylinders, 2 feet in diameter, each containing a piston with a travel of 2 feet that provided the vacuum on the upward stroke and the 30-inch wind pressure on the return stroke. The plant worked well, and only one of the three tenderers for rebuilding the instrument fifty years later proposed to replace it.

In 1920 Harrison & Harrison were given the contract to rebuild the organ, the work being carried out in two stages in 1924 and 1933. The organ grew to 146 stops including three percussions. In numbers of pipes it was the largest in Britain. A large new swell-box was built to accommodate the Orchestral division of the Choir, and the Solo moved to a new chamber high up on the left of the Swell. In the 1970s the console was refurbished and new switchgear provided. The small unenclosed Choir was resited from the top of the organ to behind the console, its Contra Salicional and Gamba being replaced by a Nazard and Tierce, and the Mixture re-arranged. The Great and Pedal reeds were reduced in pressure from 25 inches and 15 inches to the present 19 inches and 13 inches, and a ceiling was fitted inside the organ case. The organ remains otherwise unchanged and unrestored since the 1930s.

Plans behind the present reconstruction

Leakage from deterioration of the organ's 26 reservoirs and complex wind-trunking system reached the stage ten years ago where two additional blowers were fitted, bringing the total to seven. Even so, for some time it has not been possible to use the full resources of the instrument, a situation compounded by the ageing leatherwork of the actions and extensive splitting to the soundboards (almost all dating from 1871). For many years a technician has been in attendance each time the organ is used, and the show has only been kept on the road by the dedication of Harrison & Harrison's staff and, over the past two years, Manders’ team.

In 1999 tenders were invited for the restoration of the organ as the final stage of the Hall’s redevelopment. Organbuilders from Britain and abroad tendered to a scheme agreed by a committee headed by Ian Blackburn, the Hall's Director of Building Development, and including John Birch, Nicolas Kynaston, Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Ian Bell. The contract has been awarded to Mander Organs of London.

The Harrison tonal and mechanical revisions of the 20s were so extensive that restoration to the Willis scheme was never an option, and it was agreed by the committee and all who tendered that the Arthur Harrison organ had established its own character which should be respected. Consequently few tonal changes will be made. The 1970s ceiling will be removed, the Great reeds will be restored to their 1924 wind-pressures, and small adjustments will be made to the breaks of the Great Cymbale and Choir Mixture. A Fourniture will be added to the Great, facilitating the continued division of this department into two sections that was introduced in the 1970s, and coincidentally returning the organ to its status as Britain's largest. The Choir mutations introduced in the 1970s will be retained as the sole representatives of the work at that time, and the department will be raised slightly to speak through the grilles immediately below the Great. Some Pedal ranks will be resited, notably the 32-foot Ophicleide which obscures the Orchestral section, and the Mixture at present inside the Solo box, which will join the rest of the Pedal upperwork on display. There will be extensive restoration of the pipework of which the reeds, in particular have suffered badly.

Mechanically the work will be far-reaching. The slider soundboards and wooden wind-trunking have suffered desperately from the very low levels of relative humidity in the Hall. All soundboards, key actions and stop actions will now be completely new, laid out in broadly similar style to that existing. The system of access staircases and walkways will be replanned to recognise health & safety requirements. The wind system will incorporate some restored reservoirs but will otherwise be entirely renewed including additional supply trunks from the blowing room to the organ. This will allow the re-allocation of the rear part of the lower area of the organ as an annexe to the adjacent foyer. Apart from the addition of protective doors the console will remain outwardly little changed, but will be completely renewed 'behind the scenes' including an extensive new combination system. The decoration of the case will be restored.

Although initally it seems that only part of the work would be completed due to lack of funds, it is pleasing to report that the efforts of the authorities at the Royal Albert Hall have been well rewarded and the full restoration will now be scheduled for completion by the end of 2003.

Ian Bell, Consultant to the Royal Albert Hall for the project.

UPDATED

Wednesday May 21st 2003 was an auspicious day in the ongoing saga of our restoration project at the Royal Albert Hall. Towards the end of the afternoon, site foreman Renato Lucatello stood in the Swell chamber, dialled the office number and held aloft his mobile handset, allowing the sound of the Harmonic Piccolo to leap across the congestion charge zone from SW7 back to E2. Sixteen months after the start of site dismantling, the first of one hundred and forty-seven stops had been returned to the hall and installed onto its new soundboard. With tonal finishing of the twenty-five Swell stops currently scheduled for completion before the start of this summer’s Proms season, we are confident that most if not all of the contract can now be completed by January 2004, as originally envisaged.

The first quarter of 2002 saw the bulk of the dismantling work accomplished, with the removal of pipework and components from the Great, Swell, Pedal and unenclosed Bombard divisions. By the time that summer’s Prom season opened, we had been authorised to start on the Orchestral and unenclosed Choir divisions, while a set of folding doors had been installed across the opening recently vacated by the console. Barely had the final echoes of the Last Night celebrations died down, before we were back to collect the Solo and enclosed Bombard, funding for the complete organ project having been successfully secured by the hall authorities. By the end of the year we had established a more-or-less permanent presence on site, restoring certain larger components which could not be removed from the organ (notably the winding system and chests for the 32’ front pipes), and installing new soundboards and wind trunks as they arrived from the factory. Momentum had been building up throughout the year in our Bethnal Green workshops to the point where the entire staff was exclusively dedicated to tasks bearing the unmistakable “RAH” costing code. A landmark occasion was the IBO summer meeting and barbecue, held at our premises on Saturday July 13th. The theme for the morning’s technical presentation was soundboard design and construction, an opportunity for us to demonstrate to our professional colleagues our approach to the unprecedented task of manufacturing twenty-three new slider soundboards for one single organ building contract. Laid out in the main workshop in impressive array were the three Great fluework soundboards as well as the four high-pressure soundboards for the Great, Pedal and unenclosed Bombard reeds, destined for the level above. Like their Willis and Harrison predecessors, the manual soundboards have all been made to a common rod, a factor which delivered many economies of scale in itself, whilst also prompting the development of several ingenious labour-saving jigs on the shop floor as the project progressed. Also on display was a testing rig containing prototype compound magnets, developed on our behalf by Solid State Organ Systems to provide the primary electro-pneumatic key action for all of the soundboards. At the time of writing, the “workshop” phase is gradually drawing to a conclusion; work on the Solo and Bombard components is well advanced, and items pertaining to other contracts are beginning to make their presence known on the shop floor. Repairs to all of the metal pipework are complete, and the metal shop staff have decamped in toto to site, where a number of tasks await them, not least the restoration of the lead conveyancing runs to the two 32’ fronts. All of the heavy lifting work relating to the lowest three manuals and the Pedal division has been accomplished, and the site team has settled into a routine of wiring and assembling trunking runs in the main organ case, while tuning of the Swell pipework takes place in the chamber above them. We plan to re-install the console before the Proms season starts, although from the public’s viewpoint it will remain behind closed doors for many months yet. Even so, the transformation of the Royal Albert Hall’s Grand Organ from building site to majestic musical instrument has moved several decisive steps towards completion.

STOP PRESS > July 2003

In the run-up to the Proms we were able to install both the console and the pipework in the Orchestral division, as can be seen in the pictures (above).