Anna Lapwood: Luna (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

James Newton Howard: Flying (from “Peter Pan”); Olivia Belli: Grain Moon; Chopin: Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2; Kristina Arakelyan: Dreamland; Dario Marianelli; Dawn (from “Pride and Prejudice”); Hans Zimmer: Stay (from “Interstellar”); Bach & Gounod: Ave Maria: Glass: Mad Rush; Ghislaine Reece-Trapp: In Paradisum; Ēriks Ešenvalds & Sara Teasdale: Stars; Kristina Arakelyan: Star Fantasy; Max Richter: On the Nature of Daylight; Florence Price: An Elf on a Moonbeam; Ludovico Einaudi: Experience; Debussy: Clair de Lune. Anna Lapwood, organ and conductor; Pembroke College Chapel Choir. Sony Classical 19658831402

I have followed the young British musician Anna Lapwood (b. 1995) on Twitter (now known as “X” since its takeover by a notorious right-wing ultrabillionaire) for quite some time. Her posts there show her to be a charming and unpretentious artist, devoted not only to her craft, but also to helping other musicians, especially young musicians, express themselves through music. She is skilled not only as an organist, but as a conductor and broadcaster. Inn 2021, for example, she appeared at the BBC Proms both as a presenter for BBC Television and as soloist in the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony. In 2016, when she was just 21, she was appointed Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where in 2018 she established the Pembroke College Girls’ Choir for girls aged 11 to 18. She has become quite the ambassador for classical music through her outreach on social media (she’s known worldwide as “the TikTok organist”), her midnight sessions at the Royal Albert Hall, and her numerous concerts and personal appearances. In 2021, she released an organ recording for the Signum Classics label titled Images; you can find our review here. Now it is 2023, and she has a new recording out for a new label, Sony Classical, titled Luna.

 

While Luna featured a program consisting of established classical compositions, highlighted by a couple of larger-scale works, Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin arranged for organ by Erwin Wiersinga and Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes in an arrangement by Lapwood herself, the program for Luna is more varied. There are some traditional “classical” pieces for piano arranged for organ, some tunes from movies soundtracks, and among other things, even a couple of compositions not for organ, but for choir. Of the inspiration for this album, Lapwood writes, “one of the highlights of my year is the time I spend teaching music in Zambia. I love it for the people, the music, and the laughter, but I also always look forward to the first time I see the Zambian night sky again… You look up and it’s just completely full of stars, more stars than you ever thought possibly existed – bright stars, dull stars; some sparkling, some static; some glowing orbs and others dots smaller than pinpricks. With this album, I’m imagining that as we stare at the sky our minds can almost take us there, travelling through the night sky and exploring individual stars with their unique personalities and characteristics.”

Although the music is indeed varied in origin, the album seems to have an overall flow and consistency of sound – there are no abrupt shifts of mood, no jarring sonorities. That said, neither are the selections similar enough that they all sound the same as Lapwood makes her way from one to another. Highlights include the Chopin Nocturne, which is the kind of music you would not think of as a candidate for being played on the organ. Lapwood recalls learning the piece as a young piano student and then later teaching her own piano students to play. Of transcribing it for organ, she observes that “as with all transcriptions, there is an interesting decision-making process, exploring whether to try to make it as close as possible to the original, or to re-conceive it as an organ piece. In this case, I decided to go with the latter, experimenting with the huge variety of solo sounds this organ has to offer to give each section of melody its own unique character.”  Whatever her method, the end result is simply beautiful. Another highlight, the longest track on the album (6:47), is much different in style and mood from the Chopin. Stay, from the Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for the film Interstellar, is less about melody and more about raw feeling.

 

Lapwood supplies notes on each of the selections, and it is from these notes that we learn the interesting fact that the energetic Philip Glass piece Mad Rush, another highlight of the album, was not originally composed for the piano, as it has often been recorded (including by Glass himself), but for the organ. “Glass wrote the piece in 1978, on and for the organ of St. John the Divine, New York,” Lapwood explains. “It was written for the Dalai Llama’s first public address in North America in 1979. The organizers were expecting a large number of people so they asked Glass to write a piece of indeterminate length that could be played while the congregation was arriving.” If you are familiar with Mad Rushfrom one of its piano recordings, hearing the original organ version should give you an added appreciation for its simple elegance and energy.

 

The two tracks that include the voices of the Pembroke College Chapel Choir are also both quite captivating and worthy of special mention. Stars, by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds (b. 1977) sets a poem by the late American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1993). (Speaking of Ešenvalds, there is an absolutely gorgeous album of his choral music that was engineered by none other than John Atkinson of Stereophile magazine fame. Both musically and sonically it is simply superb; you can read our review here). The ethereal sounds of tuned wine glasses mixed with the sound or the organ and the choir give a celestial glow to the sound of this track, which is rife with otherworldly overtones. The other piece featuring the chorus, On the Nature of Daylight by the German-born British composer Max Richter (b. 1966), has no text, but combines their voices with the sound of the organ in a gently meditative blend that is at once calming and hopeful. Lapwood writes of this piece that “it feels particularly special to be including this piece on the album as it brings together the two sides of who I am as a musician: playing the organ but also working with the amazing choirs at Pembroke.”

The album closes with another piece for piano that Lapwood has transcribed for the organ, Debussy’s popular Clair de Lune. “As with the Chopin,” she explains, “I had to make choice: be as loyal as possible to the original, or reimagine it as an organ piece? Once again, I decided on the latter, using it as an opportunity to explore the huge variety of soft, delicate colours the organ has to offer.” As she did with the Chopin, in transcribing the Debussy, she has created something most lovely, certainly a fitting way to end an album titled Luna. It’s an album that is fresh, fun, and full of light and life – well worth a listen.