Organ Works

Hangzhou is the capital of the Chinese Province of Zhejiang and lies some 190km south-west of Shanghai. The city itself has 8 million inhabitants and stands at the mouth of the River Qiantang into the Bay of Hangzhou.

The Emperor’s Canal, an important link with Northern China, starts in Hangzhou. The city is also an important centre of Chinese silk trade and production.

Hangzhou is one of the cradles of Chinese civilisation and evidence of Liangzhu culture goes back more than 4700 years. The town’s documented history began in the year 221 BC. Hangzhou was the capital of the southern Song Dynasty (1132-1276). The China explorer Marco Polo is said to have described it as the ‘most beautiful and most magnificent in the world’. At his time, in the 13th century, the town possessed the largest harbour in the world. It is no longer a port-city, the harbour having been silted up over the centuries.

It is thought that the town may have had as many as one million inhabitants in the middle of the 13th century. The majority must have been refugees and soldiers, fleeing there in the wake of the Mongol invasion. Hangzhou must thus have been the largest medieval city in the world, before Baghdad.

The chief attraction of Hangzhou is the 500-hectare West Lake with over 60 sights to the west of the centre. This lake was copied many times in China and Japan on account of its beauty, often by means of artificial dams. There are three small pagodas in the West Lake, a symbol of the lake and which appear on the reverse if the 1 Yuan banknote.

Zhejiang Music Conservatoire

The Conservatoire is a huge complex (see photo of model below), its construction completed in less than two years in 2013-4. Today it is led by 93 full-time teachers, including 17 professors, 12 doctors and 5 overseas teachers. It provides almost every type of musical education – Dance, Singing, Piano, composition and conducting.

In future, it will also be able to offer organ studies, using two instruments to be built in our workshops for each of the two concert halls. The large hall will have a 4-manual instrument of 64 stops and the somewhat smaller hall a 2-manual romantic practice organ of 19 stops.

The Case Design

In order to achieve suitable presence for a 19-stop instrument against the broad dimensions of the wall behind the stage, the façade is laid out in relatively generous proportions. Shadow lines recall the linear structure in the wall cladding and make the front appear an integral part of the flat surface furnishing of the hall. The very plastic effect of the façade is achieved through free placing of pipes, leaving the area above clear. The curved lines of the gilded mouths and tops of the pipes sweep upwards to the sides. Thin pipes with cylindrical feet alternate with larger-scale pipes with conical feet. The overall optical dynamic projects to interesting and varied effect into the auditorium. The plain, functional attached console with its narrow stop jambs stands out in distinguished black against the lower part of the case.

M. Mangani: Colors from China
J. G. Rheinberger: Sarabande et Finale from Suite c-moll op. 149

J. S. Bach: Toccata und Fuge d-moll BWV 565