Noel Mewton-Wood

Noel Mewton-Wood was born in Melbourne in November 1922 and studied at the Melbourne Conservatory of Music before moving to England in 1937 at fifteen to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Walter Petri and (after a meeting in Switzerland) with Artur Schnabel. He made his concert début at Queen’s Hall in London in 1940 at seventeen, performing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto under Sir Thomas Beecham, and emerged through the 1940s as one of the major piano talents of his generation.

His central repertoire was unusually broad and unusually contemporary for his era. He gave the world premiere of Bliss’s *Piano Concerto* in 1944 and the British premieres of Britten’s *Piano Concerto* and Tippett’s *Piano Concerto* (the latter composed for him in 1955). He played and recorded extensively in the Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin repertoire, and worked closely with Britten and Tippett as a partner in their own works. He was also a notable Bach player and worked in chamber music with the Amadeus Quartet, Antonio Janigro and his lifelong partner the bassoonist Bill Fedricks. He held a teaching post at the Royal Academy of Music.

Mewton-Wood took his own life in London in December 1953, at thirty-one, in the wake of his partner’s death — a substantial loss to British post-war music. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his recital and contemporary work.