Pipe Organ Returns to Alice Tully Hall

But Lincoln Center promised all along, and now it has delivered. The 19-ton instrument, 4,192 pipes strong, returned to Tully Hall on Monday morning aboard two semitrailers. Employees of the manufacturer, Orgelbau Th. Kuhn of Mnnedorf, Switzerland, and Lincoln Center stagehands began unloading the trucks at 8 a.m.

The process started at the hall's loading dock on 66th Street, with smaller pieces at first. Occasionally a recognizable feature -- the organist's bench, for example -- would float by. Other objects required a bit of explanation: wind chests, wooden frames about the size of small pool tables, each with hundreds of holes on the upper face to hold miniature pipes. (One of these elicited a choice bit of stagehand lingo, as the workers were told to “Iwo Jima it onto the dolly," the makeshift verb evidently denoting a number of brawny backs leaning into a task.) But most of the early cargo remained anonymous, in wooden crates or cardboard boxes.

A little later, the second truck started yielding up organ pipes on 65th Street, where the stage entrance provided a more direct route and easier turns into the hall. The pipes were laid on the floor of the orchestra level, between rows of seats. A Kuhn technician had to caution a stagehand to carry pipes cradled in his arms, not resting on a shoulder, which could leave a dent in the soft metal, an alloy of tin and lead.

Then it was back to 66th Street for the unloading of squarish wooden pipes (the contrebombarde) and the heaviest item yet: the console, looking naked, stripped of its wooden cabinet. The renovation of Lincoln Center, which has continued in the organ's absence, has evidently made a few things easier. When the console was removed, the door of the freight elevator had to be left open, a stagehand recalled, and the instrument rubbed up against the walls. But the renovation has brought a new, larger elevator to the Tully loading area.