‘...this sincere and extremely sensitive pianist’

Derek Parker profiles Noel Mewton-Wood

Did the tragic death of the Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood at the age of only 31 really deprive the world of a ‘great’ pianist? Many obituarists believed so, and the recent publication of a number of previously unobtainable recordings has done much to support the claim.

Mewton-Wood was born in Melbourne in 1922 and studied first at the Conservatorium there with the fine teacher Waldemar Seidel, moving on to the Royal Academy in London, then to Italy for lessons with Artur Schnabel. His London debut was in 1940 at the Queen’s Hall with the LSO under Beecham, when he announced with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto a talent immediately recognised by several critics.

Despite his obvious flair, he was never taken up by a major record company and for many years after his death admirers mourned the relatively tiny number of his commercial recordings. Fortunately, the BBC has recently released formerly unavailable recordings of his work – including a performance with Beecham of the huge Busoni Piano Concerto.

His professional career, though it lasted only thirteen years, was crowded: apart from performances in England (on one occasion touring as accompanist to the tenor Richard Tauber), he played also in Europe, South Africa, Turkey and at home in Australia. In London he entertained friends at his house in Hammersmith, including the composer Benjamin Britten and his companion, the tenor Peter Pears. In 1946 he gave the first performance of the revised version of Britten’s Piano Concerto, and he was often to accompany Pears when Britten was unwell or too engaged in composition. Britten seems to have encouraged his young friend’s talent for composition: Mewton-Wood wrote the music for at least two films, as well as a piano trio, the score for which seems to have disappeared. After the pianist’s death Britten wrote his third Canticle – Still falls the rain – in his memory.

Mewton-Wood was also recognised and encouraged by Arthur Bliss, who so admired the young pianist’s performance of his Piano Concerto that he wrote a sonata especially for him to perform at Michael Tippett’s St Ives Festival in 1952 – the only occasion on which I heard the pianist ‘live’ . He sailed through that work with apparent ease, though in the green room he later confessed that it was ‘bloody difficult’. He also accompanied Peter Pears in a recital of English lieder, including Tippett’s setting of Sidney Keyes’ The heart’s assurance, which I have never heard excelled.

Noel Mewton-Wood’s death was tragic. When his lover, William Fedrick, complained of stomach pains, Mewton-Wood declined to take his complaints seriously and waited some days before calling a doctor. Fedrick was taken to hospital but died on the operating table and Mewton-Wood became obsessed with the idea that he was to blame for the death. After five days of psychiatric treatment, he was found dead in his music room: he had swallowed cyanide. There is no biography, but the Australian novelist Sonia Orchard spoke to many of his friends, collecting material for her first novel, The Virtuoso, which has been considered a reliable portrait of the young artist who might, had he lived, be by now one of the world’s most renowned pianists.