Organist Anna Lapwood: ‘You almost become part of the music’

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The lighting alone at Anna Lapwood’s solo Prom performance — at London’s Royal Albert Hall last week — would have given an average church organist a heart attack. Confronted by the tractor beam of modernity — five thousand phone flashlights bouncing off disco balls, with Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar Suite blaring overhead — the milky-eyed stereotype of Tom Pinch at the organ in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit would probably teeter into oblivion.

Of course, Lapwood is not an average parish organist. Seven years after her appointment as the youngest ever director of music at an Oxbridge chapel — she is director of music at Pembroke College Cambridge — the 28-year-old conductor, broadcaster and instrumentalist has a packed-out Prom under her belt, a forthcoming album on Sony Classical, and half a million followers on TikTok. The gulf between stereotypes old and new was apparent when we met in King’s Cross, for a chat curtailed when she was chauffeured off to inspect a Johnny Walker-branded organ.

Just 5’3”, in Taylor Swift-esque red lip and blonde braid, Lapwood is an organist who is out to change not only preconceptions but the whole mood of her chosen instrument. As she said at her packed Late Prom, “It may be an organ recital, but we are not in church.” Beyond the pirouetting purple spotlights and a programme spanning plainsong and Philip Glass, it’s hard to picture a church holding an all-ages crowd at 11:30pm.

Lapwood was the first female organ scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, a choral foundation dating from 1480. How does that track with her role as associate artist of the Royal Albert Hall, opening for the 2019 Baftas and playing for electronic musician Bonobo? “For a long time I was so nervous about doing something wrong,” she says. “I never thought I’d do popular stuff. It’s reminded me that music-making should be fun — it should be about sharing joy and positivity, not sharing fear.”

Fun is not readily associated with the organ. From the anaemic malevolence of Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera to Inspector Dreyfus in The Pink Panther Returns and the prudish strains of The Lord’s My Shepherd in The Wicker Man, popular images cleave to a chilly, authoritarian past. This is due in no small part to its physicality; Lapwood is part of a campaign for adjustable benches, to save smaller players from “catapulting on to the keys”.

But that physicality comprises its unique appeal. “The organ is so intense — you’re not just hearing it, you’re feeling it. It’s on a different scale to any other instrument . . . you almost become part of the music. What better way to convey the magnitude of this ridiculous universe?”

Under the title “Moon and Stars”, the celestially themed Prom spoke to contemporary tastes, flitting unobtrusively between film scores, Buddhist-inflected minimalism, and requiems; her forthcoming album, Luna, puts music from the 2003 film of Peter Pan alongside “Ave Maria”. Lapwood’s conciliatory, immersive approach aims for “shared emotional experiences”, rather than zoning out during communion. Traditionalists may look to secular influences on baroque repertoire; Jan Sweelinck, the celebrated 16th-century organist known as the “Orpheus of Amsterdam”, reworked popular tunes to attract seafarers from the red light district.

The Prom started with contemporary women composers, Kristina Arakelyan’s Star Fantasy and Olivia Belli’s Limina Luminis showcasing expressive range as well as the starry theme. Ghislaine Reece-Trapp’s In Paradisum evoked Duruflé and Fauré’s settings with shimmering textures and paradoxically delicate pedal melody; a dedication to someone who passed away during lockdown spoke to the continued social role of sacred music.

Audience patter eased into Zimmer’s “Cornfield Chase”, with phone lights held aloft per social media tradition. An Elf on a Moonbeam drew chuckles with its cinematic registration, showcasing the organ’s reed, mixture, and string stops: fizzling solo lines and jazzy, ululating chords were stacked across four keyboards. Philip Glass’s Mad Rush extended time-bending motivic contrasts into bluntly effective red lighting. An argument for the organ’s romantic streak, via two Debussy transcriptions, was dwarfed by the secular shock and awe of “No Time for Caution”, the final selection from the Interstellar Suite. Unleashing Zimmer’s signature lugubrious parping, with the rhythmic woof of 32-foot pedals, Lapwood swayed over the console in full Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean mode — a fitting tribute to the composer who dragged the organ into blockbuster entertainment.

“Deconstructing genre barriers has transformed my relationship with the organ,” Lapwood reflects. “When I go back to playing Bach or Messiaen, I know it better than I did before.”

Despite the scale of instrument and audience, individual connections are the core of her work, whether teaching in Cambridge or next year’s recital at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Focusing on the people who connect with her music — choristers, retired ex-organists and TikTokers alike — “suddenly it just feels like you’re sharing who you are,” she says. “And it’s a very intimate experience.”

annalapwood.co.uk