They arrive late, under cover of darkness, pulling up to the Kennedy Center in their rented white Ford Fusion just as the last patrons are heading home. Six nights a week for six weeks in a row this fall, Richard Marchand and Daniel Fortin have been the center’s most regular visitors.
A security guard greets them at the door and ushers them to the Concert Hall, where, shortly after 11 p.m., the two quiet and unassuming French Canadians start their workday.
(Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) - Pipes that make up the facade of the new organ.
First, a coffee.
Then the night noises.
Brrrrroaaaemmmmmmmmmm. “Non!”
Dink, dink, dink.
Brrrooemmmmmm. “Non, non.”
Bbbbrrrruummmmmmm. “Oui, oui. Bon.”
Marchand is seated at the brand-new pipe organ console on the Concert Hall stage. The console has four keyboards, an enormous foot pedal system and more levers, switches and geegaws than you’d find in a 747 cockpit.
He presses on a key and holds the note. A giant burr slowly fills the empty hall. The floor trembles ever so slightly. Behind the stage and up a flight of stairs, Fortin stands amid a warren of 5,000 pipes, also brand-new, making minute tweaks until he and Marchand are satisfied with the resulting sound. Then on to the next pipe. And so on. Hour after hour, night after night.
This organ, this $2 million musical behemoth given to the National Symphony Orchestra by Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein, and recently christened the Rubenstein Family Organ, is the building’s newest resident, and Marchand and Fortin are midwiving its delivery. They are tuning and preparing it — note by note, key by key, pipe by pipe.
Five thousand pipes.
Their deadline is its grand official debut, a free concert with the orchestra Tuesday.
For the NSO, the new organ is a godsend — even if God took his time sending it. Its predecessor, the Filene Organ, which arrived in 1972 and is the only organ the Kennedy Center had ever known, has been mostly silent for a couple of years. And before that, it had been a bit . . . unwieldy.
Near the end, damaged by water and age, the organ was the source of some embarrassment. It leaked bleets and blurts — and other sounds that shouldn’t be heard in public. It had no manners. It would “speak” when it wasn’t supposed to. In organ terms this is known as a cipher and the Filene had some doozies.
“It’s like a heckler interrupting a speech,” says the NSO’s organist, William Neil. “Over the years there were some massive ciphers that sabotaged concerts.”
Neil doesn’t want to pile on, however. The Filene had many good qualities, he insists. But the old organ was never a perfect fit for the NSO. Its maker, Aeolian-Skinner, was a great company but it was going through bankruptcy at the time it was building the Filene. The organ was not its finest creation.
“It had a bright, brilliant sound but it was no match for organs of the 19th and early 20th century in terms of symphonic power,” says Neil.
The previous organ never quite had the depth or oomph to fill the hall, satisfy the musicians or excite the audience. This new one, everyone says, has enough lung power to blow the Kennedy Center from its foundation.
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