When Sydney Symphony Orchestra returned to its newly renovated Opera House Concert Hall in 2022, the world’s largest known mechanical action pipe organ, damaged by water from a sprinkler, lay silent and untouched for 18 months. 

This final program in exciting young English organist Anna Lapwood’s two-week residency with the SSO showed what audiences had been missing with a first half comprising Australian premieres of two works written for her, Kristina Araklyan’s Toccata and Max Richter’s four-movement concerto Cosmology for organ, orchestra and choir.

Both works received their world premieres under German conductor André de Ridder in May last year at the Royal Albert Hall, where Lapwood is resident organist. He is in Sydney to direct these four performances.

Anna Lapwood and the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ. Photo © Jay Patel.

The raising of the pink acoustic “petals” enhanced the feeling of a rocket’s lift-off as Lapwood launched into Armenian-British composer Araklyan’s explosive 10-minute piece. Her whirling chromatic runs vied with syncopated orchestral rhythms punctuated by mighty power chords from the organ loft. Then the rhythm and volume were pulled back for an edgy dissonant duet between organ and trumpet before the relentless rhythms returned ending on a mighty all-stops-out chord from Lapwood.    

If Toccata was a pocket rocket, Richter’s concerto was a complete contrast. “It’s a piece where I think we have to slow down,” Lapwood said by way of introduction. It describes a return trip from Earth to deep space with movements titled Voyagers, Orion Nebula, The Pleiades and Earthrise.

Using a large orchestra boosted by piano, two harps and a platoon of percussion it starts with a quiet pulse from marimba and organ pedal notes and the sense of a spacecraft’s instruments beeping and humming. The simple ascending step chord sequence gradually asserts itself coming to a triumphant end with trumpets and organ.

There’s a peaceful spaciousness in the next section with gentle flute figures and a broad chorale from the horns over organ pedal notes before it all fades, as if passing into the distance. Shifting rhythms underpin the sense of mystery in the third movement, the wordless choir and trombones and tuba building in intensity before organ and orchestra repeat the simple rising chord sequence to a crashing crescendo – so abrupt that we might think the concerto is over.

However, the best is yet to come. 

Anna Lapwood and the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ. Photo © Jay Patel.

Listening to the final movement, inspired by astronaut William Anders’ famous Earthrise photograph shot from the Apollo 8 moon mission, you could have mistakenly believed you’d gate-crashed a Sigur Rós concert. This beautiful repeated chord sequence, with the choir vocalising JS Bach’s chorale Wachet auf (Sleepers Awake!), completes the circle in awe-inspiring cinematic style.

After interval de Ridder, who will take up his duties as Music Director of New Zealand Symphony Orchestra next year, led an intelligent and finely nuanced reading of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Laying aside his baton for the first movement, he allowed the Introduction to open out naturally so that Francesco Celata’s solo clarinet entry felt beautifully placed. The brass players were on top form for their chorale at the end of the section.

The five movements are a showpiece for the various sections of the orchestra, with winds and brass playing cat and mouse in the second Game of Pairs movement while in the nocturnal Elegy, Emma Sholl’s flute and Shefali Pryor’s oboe twittered and rustled over dark strings.

Concertmaster Andrew Haveron led energetically in the Interrupted Intermezzo in which Bartók reportedly pokes fun at Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, while giving a nod to Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow.

This work features in a fascinating 1964 documentary about the SSO which you can find in the archives section of its website. I thoroughly recommend checking it out.

Anna Lapwood performs Max Richter: A Universe of Sound until 28 March.