Classical Music: Luna Anna Lapwood

Anna Lapwood's meteoric rise to fame is justly deserved. A natural communicator, Lapwood has curated a programme that demonstrates her skill as one of the country’s foremost organists. Instead of opting for ostentatious, showy-loud compositions, this is a disc that shrewdly captures the full textures of the quieter ranks of pipes with sensitivity and balance.

She is also a skilled transcriber, as many of the pieces on this album show. Many are her own transcriptions, where her depth of knowledge and understanding of the organ is exemplified. 

It’s quite refreshing to hear the result of her expert registrations that let the tonal colours of the more delicate and elegant, quieter resonant pipes permeate through an atmospheric soundscape to create an ambience that takes the listener to a predominantly diaphanous world. 

Be prepared to sit back and hear the king of instruments dazzle in unexpected ways. Whether it be Chopin’s Nocture in E flat or an Elf on a Moonbeam, Lapwood creates glorious diminuendos, which are just as exciting as her well-controlled crescendos. In creating such a splendid disc, Lapwood immersed herself in the milieu of the Royal Hospital School Chapel, Chelsea, spending 30 hours getting to know the organ and its capabilities. It has certainly reaped rewards for the listener. There is also a bonus: the Pembroke College Chapel Choir at Cambridge, which Lapwood conducts, appears on two tracks.

She uses the building to create sound that grabs the listener with such intensity that the drama is never lost and her transcriptions, such as La Mer, lose none of their validity.