The Royal Albert Hall organ is a massive beast. Just count all those pipes, all 9,999 of them, many hidden from view. Built in 1871, it towers over the BBC Proms’ platform like some malevolent machine, sometimes erupting with a deafening blast of sound but also capable of making the floor tremble imperceptibly with its subterranean shudder.
Organist Anna Lapwood is an associate artist of the Albert Hall, and there must be times when her job resembles that of a lion tamer, fighting to bring the unruly monster to heel. Still only 27 years old, she has a large social media following, a million and a half and counting, a significant proportion of which turned out for this late-night Prom (her TikTok followers enjoy watching her overnight practice sessions at the Hall).
A solo organ recital in this vast auditorium might seem an odd prospect, Lapwood sitting with her back to the audience, her instrument towering over her. Indeed, we saw more of the page-turner than of Lapwood herself. Still, an elaborate light-show added visual spectacle to match Lapwood’s chosen theme, Moon and Stars. The size of the instrument produced an almost surround-sound effect, while the complicated mechanism of playing it, using both hands and feet, suggested that we were listening to several players at once; but no, it was all Lapwood.
Lapwood opened with three recent pieces by women composers: ever since being told that playing the organ wasn’t for girls, she has done everything she can to prove that isn’t so. The most immediately attractive of the three was Olivia Belli’s Limina Liminis, receiving its world premiere. Written especially for Lapwood, it began with a quiet, gently rocking figure that slowly built in complexity and volume, until suddenly the sound cleared away to a radiant shimmer: the “threshold of light” that gave the work its title.
There was a tinge of mystical minimalism to much of the programme, particularly evident in Philip Glass’s Mad Rush, written in 1979 to honour the Dalai Lama. Deliberately written to obliterate any sense of goal-orientated development, this was Glass’s music condensed down to its insistent essence. A thread running through the evening was Lapwood’s elaborate arrangement of cues from Hans Zimmer’s score for the film Interstellar (another social media favourite). I haven’t seen the film, but Lapwood’s music was evocative, deploying the organ’s entire range, from the merest whisper to stadium-rock pomp at full volume.
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♬ Chevaliers De Sangreal (From "The Da Vinci Code") - Midnight Sessions at the Royal Albert Hall - Anna Lapwood
The most fascinating pieces, though, were arrangements of Debussy. In Alexandre Guilmont’s transcription of a movement from his string quartet, the original was a distant, almost inaudible presence, while Lapwood’s own treatment of the piano piece Clair de Lune stayed closer to its prototype. Both pieces added something mysterious to Debussy’s already enigmatic sound world. A full Albert Hall was entranced throughout.
