Noel Mewton-Wood (1922 - Britten: Piano Concerto; Matyas Seiber: To Poetry; Alan Bush: Voices of the Prophets - Import CD

Credits:

Noel Mewton-Wood (1922

Description:

<1> TESTAMENT booklet note Japanese Sixty years have passed since the death of the Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, and the generation that knew his gifts at first hand is dwindling. He left very few commercial recordings, and most of those were of well-known repertoire made for small labels with orchestras and conductors of no great distinction. In the first half of the twentieth century radio broadcasting was overwhelmingly live, and only a fraction of it was ever recorded. Mewton-Wood died at just 31, so his career itself was extremely short. That is precisely why every surviving broadcast recording matters so much. Noel Mewton-Wood was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1922. He first learned the piano from his mother and soon went on to study with Waldemar Seidel at the Melbourne University Conservatorium. A genuine prodigy, he absorbed music of every kind - chamber, orchestral, instrumental and operatic - and his extraordinary sight-reading gave him command of an enormous repertoire. At fourteen, accompanied by his mother, he presented himself at the Royal Academy of Music in London. A year later he travelled to Italy to study with Artur Schnabel. Returning to London in 1939, he began composition studies with Frank Bridge. He passed an audition for Sir Thomas Beecham and made his debut at the Queen's Hall in 1940 in Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. A tour of his native Australia was postponed because of the Second World War, but finally took place in the summer of 1945. In 1948 he played Busoni's notoriously demanding Piano Concerto with Beecham and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Contemporary music was always at the centre of his interests, and he was a tireless advocate for many composers. In March 1945, with the New Zealand pianist Richard Farrell, he gave the Australian premiere of Stravinsky's Concerto for Two Pianos. Around the same time he gave what was effectively the British premiere of Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis (first at Morley College, then at the National Gallery). Once settled in London, he increasingly took up works by British composers including Alan Rawsthorne, Constant Lambert, Michael Tippett, Arthur Bliss, Humphrey Searle, William Walton and Benjamin Britten.

Tracklisting:

1.Piano Concerto in D, Op. 13: 1. Toccata: Allegro molto e con brio
2.Piano Concerto in D, Op. 13: 2. Waltz: Allegretto
3.Piano Concerto in D, Op. 13: 3. Impromptu: Andante lento -
4.Piano Concerto in D, Op. 13: 4. March: Allegro moderato, sempre alla marcia
5.To Poetry: 1. Invocation
6.To Poetry: 2. Sonnet
7.To Poetry: 3. Tears
8.To Poetry: 4. Timor Mortis
9.To Poetry: 5. Epilogue
10.Voices of the Prophets, Op. 41: 1. From the Sixty-fifth Chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isiah
11.Voices of the Prophets, Op. 41: 2. From the Oration Against the Scholastic Philosophy
12.Voices of the Prophets, Op. 41: 3. From Selections from Milton
13.Voices of the Prophets, Op. 41: 4. From My Song is for All Men