Page 84 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Lapwood is enjoying a meteoric rise. Hot on the heels of her debut solo

album, Images, and her anchoring of the television coverage of BBC Young

Musician, there has been the publication of a ground-breaking collection of organ
pieces by women, Gregoriana, which Lapwood compiled and edited. Next month

she makes her professional Aldeburgh Festival debut — she first played Snape

Maltings as a teenage harpist — and the two programmes reflect her range,

curiosity and sense of mission. On an organ specially designed for the occasion,

she will perform her arrangements of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and
Messiaen’s Vocalise-Étude, as well as pieces by the young British composers

Owain Park, Kerensa Briggs and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Two nights later she will be joined by singers from the Chapel Choir of Pembroke

College, Cambridge, where she has been the director of music since 2016. That
concert will explore plainchant and feature such contemporary composers as

Dobrinka Tabakova. Shortly afterwards comes the release of Celestial Dawn, the

second album from Lapwood and her beloved Pembroke choirs (in addition to the

regular chapel ensemble, in 2018 she founded a choir for girls aged between 11

and 18.) Not bad for a college that she admits has always been “under the radar”,

chorally speaking. “Nobody really thought that Pembroke Choir was going to be
anything,” she says. “So we’ve been able to try things out; see what works and

what really doesn’t.”

Lapwood’s determination to open up classical music, that most seemingly elite of

genres, has definitely been “working”. Her commitment to boost neglected or fresh

voices is clearly an authentic mission. “Giving the girls [from the younger choir]
opportunities, like letting them conduct a whole public Evensong and supporting

them, even if it doesn’t work perfectly, makes me so happy. Because next time it

just might.” Lapwood’s fierce advocacy of female composers: commissioning,

performing, then — crucially — recording them, also seems to be spearheading

change in an industry that badly needs it.