Orgelbau Th. Kuhn AG, 1974
New organ
www.orgelbau.ch/ope=112050
IV/P/62
United States of America, New York
Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall
A princely gift
The so-called «Chamber Music Hall» (with around 1000 seats!) had already been financed as a gift from Miss Alice Tully to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Then, as the crowning mark of her generosity, she also wished to enable an exemplary organ to be built for the hall. According to the visions of her advisors, the instrument should be a universal organ suitable for all styles of organ music and, at the same time, function as an example to the whole of America for quality of its design and technical systems. For this purpose, slider windchests, a mechanical key action and enclosed cases for the divisions were called for, but also multiple capture systems. The donor's passion for France led to the involvement of André Marchal in the planning of the instrument's tonal features and also to the use of French terminology on the console.
At the inauguration, the four-manual organ consisted of 61 sounding stops, and, according to the English terminology, a Great, Positive, Swell, Brustwerk and Pedal. The façade is exemplary in terms of the visual clarity of its sectioning into the various divisions. The Swell, which is not visible, is designed as a large French «récit expressif». In the Great, the name 'Flute harmonique' is conspicuous, once described as, in the words of Pierre Chérons «the warhorse of Cavaillé-Colls».
At the time, this concert hall organ was met with undivided approval among experts. After the inaugural concert on 13th April 1975, the veritable «old master» among American organists, Edward Power Biggs (1906-1977) who had performed as soloist at the event, proclaimed, in the highest words of praise, that «The Tully Hall instrument is built in the way God intended organs to be built!»
In 1984, to round off the instrument's stoplist, a Contrebombarde 32' was added to the Pedal, this also a gift from Miss Alice Tully.
Friedrich Jakob, 2007
Translation: SJR