Anna Lapwood [BBC]

WITH rare exceptions it was generally the case that Britain’s organ lofts were ruled by men – and what’s more, men who never sought the spotlight of celebrity, being half-hidden in those lofty eyries, barely visible to anyone who heard them play.

But things have changed. And at the forefront of it all is the extraordinary Anna Lapwood who was still in her 20s when she surfaced, almost out of nowhere, to become the public face of organ-playing: maybe not the best you’ll ever come across but certainly the best-known, with the most panache and an army of social-media followers that make her an ambassador for the instrument like no one else.

Lit by her personality, the organ has acquired a resurrected chic. People are queuing up for lessons. And they’ll soon be queuing for up for Lapwood’s all-night organ-focused Prom on August 8, scheduled to start at 11pm and run on to 7am the following morning.

How she’ll keep it going I’ve no idea, and some will say it’s just a Tik Tok stunt. But it reflects the fact that organists often do their practice in the middle of the night (the only time you can get access to great beasts like the four-manual monster at the Albert Hall). And in addition to the organ, there’s also music from the choir of Pembroke College Cambridge which Lapwood ran until recently, plus assorted guest-artists like Barokksolistene: a raucous period band whose noise alone should keep the audience awake. Those who last the course deserve free breakfasts, though there’s nothing to suggest the BBC are offering.

Other highlights at the Proms this week include two heavily themed programmes: a star-gazing night from the National Youth Orchestra, August 9, with Holst’s The Planets and a piece by American composer Caroline Shaw called The Observatory; and a watery night, August 10, where the LPO play Debussy’s La Mer, Sibelius’s The Oceanides, and Michael Tippett’s evocation of a damply perfumed landscape in Senegal, The Rose Lake. Also worth your time is Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, August 11, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, August 13.
But playing alongside the Stravinsky is the UK premiere of a new cello concerto by ultra-fashionable Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Called Before the Fall, it revisits the classic image of conflict in a concerto, with the soloist imagined as a hero going off to fight against overwhelming odds – like a gladiator in a Roman stadium, observes the soloist in question, Johannes Moser. Let’s hope the performance turns out not to be quite so life and death.

All Proms run at the Albert Hall and are broadcast live on Radio 3. bbc.co.uk/proms

• Finally, Acland Burghley School in NW5 has an enviable reputation for music, with no less than the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra based in the building. And on August 12 it hosts the classy young tenor Hugo Hymas in Schubert’s song cycle of life, love and despair, Die Schone Mullerin. An event. Tickets.oae.co.uk