{"id":477244,"date":"2026-10-26T16:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T16:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/477244\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T16:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T16:14:07","slug":"review-anna-lapwoods-dallas-concert-wasnt-your-usual-organ-recital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/477244\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Anna Lapwood\u2019s Dallas concert wasn\u2019t your usual organ recital"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pipe organ has come to be considered a religious instrument, and indeed most such instruments are in churches and cathedrals. But a parallel secular identity can be dated back to 18th-century France, not to mention boleros and storm pieces composed in the 19th.<\/p>\n

In the 1920s and ’30s, before every town had a symphony orchestra, audiences filled vast municipal auditoriums to hear organists play symphonic and opera excerpts and arrangements of popular melodies. In more recent decades, Virgil Fox and Cameron Carpenter have attracted big audiences for populist performances. Other organists improvise music for silent-film presentations.<\/p>\n

Into that varied tradition now comes British organist Anna Lapwood, with the added impact of an enormous worldwide social media following. She packs major venues on both sides of the Atlantic, and her sold-out Sunday afternoon recital at the Meyerson Symphony Center<\/a> prompted booking a second performance Thursday night \u2014 also said to be sold out.<\/p>\n

Lapwood is known for her arrangements of popular movie scores, and her Sunday program, presented by the\u00a0Dallas Symphony Orchestra<\/a>, included her versions of music from \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and \u201cPirates of the Caribbean,\u201d both composed by Hans Zimmer, and the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d trilogy, by Howard Shore.<\/p>\n

An ebullient personality, Lapwood talked a lot. Before what she called a symphony from \u201cLord of the Rings,\u201d she extensively traced the action, singing themes identified with characters and things. She added a few gentle vocal lines during the performance itself. The performance took 36 minutes; the spoken intro seemed almost as long. I\u2019d have voted for less talk.<\/p>\n

Before the \u201cPirates\u201d suite, Lapwood rehearsed the audience in vocal lines from the score. A lot of people audibly knew the words and tunes and joined in singing at the appropriate moments.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s sole piece composed for organ was \u201cLimina Luminis,\u201d by Olivia Belli. Rachel Portman\u2019s gently hypnotic \u201cFlight\u201d was arranged from a piece originally for violin and piano.<\/p>\n

Lapwood remarked on the formidable power of the Meyerson\u2019s big C.B. Fisk organ, and she made generous use of the big trumpet and tuba stops. Deep pedal registers moved a lot of air. But a lot of the selections began with gentle, hypnotic flutings before building to enormous aural assaults. The audience got its money\u2019s worth in decibels, but with a good deal of variety on the way there. Sarah-Anne Elizabeth McGrath supplied a virtuoso light show of shifting colors and patterns.<\/p>\n

One doesn\u2019t often think of organists as entertainers, but Lapwood rates the label in excelsis. She doesn\u2019t set out to impress with dizzying speed, as Carpenter does. Her technique is obviously well grounded, though, and her elaborate registration schemes \u2014 all those crescendos and decrescendos \u2014 display both imagination and physical facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Big tunes and supportive pulsings great and small created atmospheres and set scenes. Heard apart from its dramatic origins, was much of the movie music musically compelling? Not so much to my ears, but the audience obviously loved the experience \u2014 and Lapwood herself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pipe organ has come to be considered a religious instrument, and indeed most such instruments are in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,95191,93542,87998,101759],"class_list":["post-477244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-classical-music","tag-tp-performing-arts","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tp-dallas-symphony-orchestra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}