Page 93 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

wasn't born in Hertfordshire; the article I'd read that claims she was is wrong, although she does live
there now. ‘I was born in High Wycombe,’ Lapwood confirms, before adding: ‘We are the same age,
though!’

Born in Buckinghamshire, then, Lapwood spent a lot of her childhood learning to play an unusually
large number of instruments, from the pennywhistle (‘I used to get very cross when people didn't
see it as a proper instrument’) to the harp. This began, she says, because she ‘massively idolised’
her older brother, would watch him practising, and would sneak in and have a go when he wasn't
looking. ‘I just kept taking up the instruments he would take up,’ says Lapwood. ‘But because I was
so desperate to be like him, I would work really hard at them. He wasn't quite as good at practising,
so I would end up overtaking him and he would then give up the instrument.’ After this had
happened with four or five instruments, the siblings’ parents banned Anna from touching any brass
instruments so that her brother could have the French horn – ‘which he still gave up after about two
years’, she adds.

For her, however, there was no going back: ‘You just get a bit addicted to the process of transferring
the skills from one instrument to another, so I just kept on absorbing more and more. I remember
when I asked to take up the harp, my parents and teachers said that this had to stop.’ Lapwood
would pick up most of the instruments in charity shops and would teach herself, so the financial
cost wasn't the main barrier. ‘My teachers said, “You're already playing nine instruments – if you
want to be a musician then you have to focus”. I think it's quite funny that at the age of 11, that was
the message,’ says Lapwood. ‘If I'd listened to them, then I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you
now.’

Anna Lapwood conducting at Pembroke College, Cambridge © NICK RUTTER