Every spring, when the magnolia blossoms on Chang'an Avenue, Wang Xingsheng, senior director of the stage coordination and supervision team of the Stage Technology Department of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, will be busier than usual. During the stage maintenance period of the theater's "closed doors", he had to systematically maintain the organ of the town hall treasure of the concert hall. This huge, spectacular, mysterious instrument is like a child brought up by Wang Xingsheng. From the beginning of the initial construction and installation, so far, Wang Xingsheng has accompanied it all the way through more than ten years, and every sound plug, every sound pipe, and every circuit has witnessed this story full of warmth and "craftsman spirit".
6500 sound pipes were loaded into 7 containers
In 2003, Wang Xingsheng graduated from Shenyang Conservatory of Music majoring in piano tuning. That year, the National Centre for the Performing Arts, which was still under preparation and construction, recruited soldiers. Piano playing, sight singing ear training, music knowledge, piano maintenance tuning, foreign languages... After a long series of examinations, Wang Xingsheng passed the exam in the second year. In July 2004, he came to the owners' committee of the then National Centre for the Performing Arts.
"At that time, the theater was not capped, and cement was still being injected." Wang Xingsheng came early for the imminent construction and installation of the concert hall organ. The organ of the National Centre for the Performing Arts is from johannes Kles, a German organ manufacturer, and the famous Cologne Cathedral organ system in Germany, with 6500 pipes, magnificent, when it arrived at the theater, large and small parts used 7 containers.
In September 2006, the organ was officially installed. It is often said that the organ is "an instrument in the building, a building in the instrument", and its main structure installation consists of 5 parts, namely the structural part, the power part, the electrical part, the sound pipe part and the strong and weak part used to change the volume. In Wang Xingsheng's recollection, the 9-month-long installation and commissioning process was like building a house: "First lay the foundation, use a very long electric drill to make a particularly deep eye at the back of the concert hall, then build a steel frame, and then use a level to detect." Each time a layer is set up, an air chamber is installed on the shelf, and the air chamber is a sound tube on top, and it is followed by the process layer by layer. ”
Of the 6500 pipes of the pipe organ, the largest is about 11 meters long, and when installed, the staff must tie up the two ends of the pipe with an electric hoist, slowly move it to the specified position, and then carefully straighten it through the lifting and lowering of the electric hoist. Most of the rest of the sound pipes are 2.4 meters long and weigh about 40 kilograms, and many of them were carried by Wang Xingsheng himself.
In order to ensure the final presentation of the organ, the German manufacturer specially sent technicians to Beijing for installation and commissioning, and there were up to 12 people at the most. For 9 months, every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Wang Xingsheng was with them, eating, drinking coffee, and more importantly, studying. When the German drilled into the electric well under the mechanical console of the concert hall to lay organ cables, he did not hesitate to jump. The electric well was low and narrow, and it would allow a person to crawl through, and Wang Xingsheng could only see a large sole that was about to touch his face, "it was particularly stuffy, it was like suffocating."
In addition to impressing Germans with an almost obstinate attitude of curiosity, sometimes it is also necessary to rely on eyesight. "For example, they have to come down from above to get a tool, you hand it to him in time, and the next time, he will have a good feeling for you." 」 Gradually, the Germans opened their hearts to Wang Xingsheng, and the days of fighting side by side and being a teacher and a friend have benefited him a lot until now.
"Human Flesh Backwater" saves a lot of costs for the pipe organ to moisturize and repair itself
The organ stood in the most conspicuous position in the concert hall, shining silver, but in fact, this big guy who looked cold and hard was quite delicate. The instrumental table and internal structure of the organ use a lot of wood and are very sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. Its wood treatment was done in Bonn, Germany, where the climate was humid and Beijing was much drier, and soon the organ began to be overwhelmed.
"No one plays it, the organ plays on its own, and it's scary." Wang Xingsheng and his colleagues were very anxious. Because professional maintenance personnel could not be found at once, the masters who repaired airplanes and trains were invited to the theater. Later, I contacted the manufacturer, and the person in charge flew to Beijing with the technical director, and Gu Bu was still wearing a neat suit, lying on the ground for a long time, and confirmed that only by replacing a certain part could solve the problem.
Wang Xingsheng and his colleagues clearly understood the importance of humidity, and they placed 8 small humidifiers and 2 large humidifiers inside the organ, adding 8 buckets of water every day, and one bucket was almost 20 pounds. When adding water to a humidifier on a high place, "one person must first climb up the ladder, carry the bucket up, and then another person below to hold the water." This method of "human flesh carrying water" continued until the installation of a thermostat system in the concert hall.
The passage of time has also left various traces on the organ. One night in 2018, when a performer came to practice, there was a sudden "bang", and a sheepskin duct inside the pipe organ burst due to aging, and the wind began to "whine" and blow. After getting the processing process and precautions replying to the manufacturer's technical director as quickly as possible, Wang Xingsheng decided to do it himself. The first is to shovel the glue of the sheepskin on the air duct, "I asked the cleaning staff for a bottle of water to paint, then put on rubber gloves and shoveled with a wire ring and a brush." Within two days, Wang Xingsheng's hands were corroded to the point of peeling. A section of about 17 centimeters of wind tunnel, Wang Xingsheng repaired for a month.
Wang Xingsheng maintains the organ in the Concert Hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts
Later, similar problems arose in the rest of the sheepskin ducts. "Buying new sheepskins from abroad is very expensive, and 10 sheets is almost 10,000 yuan." Wang Xingsheng felt that it was not worth it. Wang Xingsheng found a supplier of raw materials near Shijiazhuang, "stronger than German sheepskin." And such a good sheepskin, the average price of each piece is only 150 yuan. In recent years, Wang Xingsheng has replaced about 20 sheepskin ducts for the organ, which can continue to maintain the normal operation of the organ for about 8 years.
It is regrettable that the organists are less than ten people and the equipment is idle
Many times, Wang Xingsheng is like the "housekeeper" of the organ. He is not good at any repair project, but he can find the right craftsman for all kinds of faults, and provide guidance on organ expertise from the side - it is too difficult to find people who can specialize in maintaining organ parts, or almost none, and there is a big talent gap in related fields in China.
Maintaining the organ requires not only brain research, but also a chore. "When tuning, the organ sounds like a trumpet blowing in your ears, it's so loud that you get dizzy in 20 minutes." If the reeds of the organ are all tuned, Wang Xingsheng needs 6 hours, "every 1 hour, we have to come down and rest for a while, the heart beats very fast." Wang Xingsheng also helped to adjust other organs, many of which were not fully considered for later maintenance when they were initially built, and the setting was very unreasonable.
It is a deplorable fact that the organ, which has been painstakingly maintained, is often not used too often, even on a hall-of-the-road stage such as the National Centre for the Performing Arts, so much so that fans sometimes joke, "Do you know that the row of radiators in the Concert Hall of the Grand Theater can make a sound!" At present, there are less than 10 active organists in China, but almost all provincial capital cities have organs in theaters and concert halls, which is an area that needs to be developed urgently.
Whenever talking about the organ, the audience seems to carry some stereotypes, thinking that this instrument should be majestic and magnificent, and the performers tend to explore this side of the organ when choosing the repertoire, but as a person who accompanies the organ all the way, Wang Xingsheng believes that its gentle and flexible "potential" can also be more explored. Taking the organ of the National Centre for the Performing Arts as an example, the 94 throngs each represent a timbre, some like a violin, some like a trumpet, a piccolo, and some like a cuckoo chirping, "very suitable for making some small pieces." Wang Xingsheng expects that more and more people can really "play" this instrument. Active performances are also very helpful for the maintenance of the organ, "just like the frequent use of electrical appliances, can prevent the circuit from aging due to long-term non-power, regular use of the organ, both to avoid waste of the instrument, but also to extend its service life." 」 ”
(Original title: Ingenuity cares for the "treasure of the town hall", Wang Xingsheng of the National Centre for the Performing Arts expects more people to "play" the organ)
Reporter/Gao Qian
Source/Beijing Evening News
Editor/Ying Qiao