Australian
Noel Mewton-Wood was an extraordinary mid-century pianist whose career, like that of American virtuoso
William Kapell, proved short lived -- by coincidence both
Mewton-Wood and
Kapell died in 1953, at the age of 31.
Mewton-Wood made his concert debut in Melbourne at the age of 12, and shortly thereafter caught the attention of
Wilhelm Backhaus, on tour at the time in Australia. With
Backhaus' encouragement,
Mewton-Wood was able to travel to London and study at the Royal Academy of Music, in addition to spending the summers at Lake Como taking private lessons with
Artur Schnabel, whose example made a deep impression on his playing.
Mewton-Wood made his London debut in 1940, at age 17, and he soon fell in with
Benjamin Britten,
Peter Pears, and
Michael Tippett. At war's end,
Mewton-Wood gave the world premiere of the revised version of
Britten's Piano Concerto and in the postwar years often appeared in accompaniment to
Pears, filling in for
Britten as the latter attended to other tasks. With
Pears,
Mewton-Wood premiered and made the first recordings of
Tippett's song cycle The Heart's Assurance.
Mewton-Wood was highly regarded in concerto literature, and specialized in the big Romantic works -- he played all three Tchaikovsky concertos -- as well as the titanic Piano Concerto, Op. 39, of Ferruccio Busoni. A radio aircheck of
Mewton-Wood made with
Thomas Beecham in 1948 is the earliest complete recording of the Busoni concerto known to survive.
Unlike
Kapell, who died in a plane crash,
Mewton-Wood took his own life. He was despondent over the death of a male friend who had succumbed to appendicitis, an unfortunate occurrence for which
Mewton-Wood reportedly blamed himself. One gets the impression that this is somehow not the whole story, but nonetheless his death remains shrouded in mystery.
Mewton-Wood recorded very extensively for someone so short lived; his earliest records were made in accompaniment to violinist
Ida Haendel in 1941 and the last in 1953 accompanying violinist Max Rostal in the Busoni Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 36b. While
Kapell's recorded output has been reissued all in one collection,
Mewton-Wood's has been scattered to the four winds, although ABC Classics in Australia did issue a three-disc appreciation of
Mewton-Wood's output in its Australian Heritage series.
Mewton-Wood allegedly also composed prolifically, although practically nothing is known about his work in this area.