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Noel Mewton-Wood, Melbourne born, was a performer of amazing breadth and range, both in terms of his musicianship and repertoire as well as his pianistic capabilities. He committed suicide in London on 4 December 1953, a few days after his 31st birthday. His recordings are as rare as gold dust and have been sought after by collectors for decades.
This 3-CD anthology features Mewton-Wood as concerto soloist, solo recitalist and chamber musician. It includes both his first and last commercial recordings, a privately-made radio recording (Schumann and Liszt) making its first appearance in any recorded format, and the world-premiere recordings of any of Tippett's vocal works (Boyhood's End and The Heart's Assurance), recorded for Argo/Decca and here receiving their first issue on CD.
Championed by Sir Thomas Beecham, he quickly established a reputation and began working with the likes of Richard Tauber, Josef Hassid and Ida Haendel. Other musical partnerships included Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Peter Pears, Max Rostal, Bernard Heinze, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Walter Goehr, Sir Henry Wood, George Szell and Norman Del Mar. He was also a reasonably prolific composer performing one of his own compositions, albeit anonymously, at his early audition for Sir Thomas Beecham.
Were he to have lived longer, he would have been assured a career of the status of such pianistic giants as Horowitz, Argerich or Haskil. His playing suffused vitality with warmth and ranged from almost imperceptibly delicate to massively thundering. His early death must be one of music's most tragic losses. [ABC CD introduction]
Noel Mewton-Wood - The Legendary Recordings
Althought some tracks (highlighted in blue) were already part of my previous releases, the sound quality of the ABC mastering is sometimes better. Nevertheless, this box set basically includes some of the rarest recordings by Mewton-Wood, especially the Busoni sonata for violin and piano with Max Rostal, some results of the artistic collaboration with Peter Pears, and a private recording of Schumann's Kinderszenen.
The 32-page booklet is made of a kind of thin paper in a 'not so good' quality which is slightly translucent, with background colours in blue and different white tones, and which contains many photos and some documents. I have detached the staples to scan each page separately at 1200 dpi (without raster), then scaled and reduced the images back to 600 dpi. For all image post-processing GIMP 2.6 was used to eliminate most of the remaining impairments which were quality- or age-related.
This was my last Mewton-Wood post since I don't have more of his recordings which were released on CD so far.
There is about 25 minutes of further music, which I was fortune to record during BBC3 broadcasts many years ago. In the meantime these performances have been released within the BBC Legends series of hornist Dennis Brain, which I didn't buy for the foresaid reason:
BBCL 4066
Franz Schubert: Auf dem Strom op. post. 119 D943 for Voice (Peter Pears),
Horn and Piano [8:18, BBC studios, mono, 28 Jan 1953]
BBCL 4164
Paul Hindemith: Sonata for Horn and Piano [16:24, BBC studios, mono, 28 Jan 1953]
There is a fine and detailed article, which also includes all discography data (known at that time), by Cyrus Meher-Homji, published in the International Piano Quarterly (IPC) No. 6, Winter 1999. Unfortunately my issue got lost. If someone still has this issue at hand I should be very grateful if you could leave a private message or if you would make scans for sharing. Thanks.
Several of Mewton-Wood's live performances have been recorded by BBC. All are still awaiting a CD release, hopefully some day within the 'Legends' series..., as well as some of his rare Decca studio recordings were never re-released: (unless otherwise stated all by BBC in NSA)
- Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte, recorded in January 1953 (with Peter Pears)
- Busoni: Fantasia Contrappuntistica, recorded 29 June 1953
- Lambert: Sonata, recorded 12 Dec 1951
- Liszt: Sonetto 123 del Petrarca, recorded in 1953
- Rawsthorne: Bagatelles, recorded 12 Dec 1951
- Schumann: Davidsbundlertanze op. 6, recorded in 1950 (Decca 78rpm)
- Tippett: The Heart's Assurance, recorded in January 1953 (with Peter Pears)
- Walton: Violin Sonata, recorded in 1953 (with Max Rostal)
- Hindemith: Ludus Tonalis, performed at the National Gallery series during the war (unknown whether recorded by BBC and possibly still in the archives)
- Tchaikovsky: Grand Sonata op. 37 [recording date and label not known to me; there may be two different recordings, one (expected to have been made) for Decca and, obviously, one earlier session when (still ?) being in Australia (complete sonata or excerpts only, made for a radio broadcast production)]

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