Exact contemporaries, Noel Mewton-Wood and William
Kapell shared a grim connection. They both died at thirty-one, in 1953,
Kapell in a plane crash, Newton-Wood by his own hand. Melbourne-born
Mewton-Wood’s talent was spotted early. He made his concert debut at
twelve, was heard by Wilhelm Backhaus, then on an Australian tour, and
was soon studying piano at the Royal Academy of Music with fellow Australian
Max Pirani and composition with Frank Bridge. He also attended Schnabel’s
master classes near Lake Como. His London debut came at Queen’s Hall,
conducted by Beecham. He was still only seventeen.
He premiered the revised version of Britten’s Piano
Concerto in 1946 and regularly performed with Bliss, Britten and Pears,
as well as Tippett. His embrace of the gargantuan Busoni Concerto was
no less remarkable and a recording exists of his performance, again
with Beecham, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in January 1948. Hindemith
was yet another fervent admirer of a pianist who consumed the contemporary
literature with as much enthusiasm as the Romantic. This three CD set
comes from ABC in its Australian Heritage series and spans the range
of his tragically short career. In addition Dante have released a number
of his recordings – the Chopin Concertos, none on ABC, are to be found
on Dante HPC105, the Fourth Beethoven coupled with an excellent Schumann
Concerto is on HPC106, and a Dante Double contains all three Tchaikovsky
Concertos. The Weber sonatas are on Pearl and doubtless other things
have been reissued. But much of his slender discography is now once
more available and we have a renewed opportunity to survey it and consider
his abiding legacy.
The Beethoven Concerto might, given his studies in
Switzerland, be assumed to be firmly in the Schnabelian mould. He is
certainly trenchant in his attacks, with an air of internal drama heightened
by considerable reserves of technique and engagement. As elsewhere in
these often-revelatory discs he can sometimes seem almost too involved,
sometimes forcing his tone, especially in climactic passages. But these
are passing details – sensitivity allied to intensity was his imperishable
virtue. Goehr is an entirely sympathetic conductor, as he is elsewhere,
though the orchestra is rather subfusc – winds very forward in the balance
and not always attractive and strings that can sound more than a little
scrawny. But the conception as a whole is entirely winning. Maybe there
is a little retarded rhythm at 10’01 but it is of a piece with the performance
of the movement as a whole. The slow movement is inward at a slow tempo;
weight of piano tone judged perfectly whereas the finale is vivacious,
life-affirming with some turbulent playing toward the end of the movement.
The performance as a whole sounds much as it should – as an involved
argument revealed through struggle.
Mewton-Wood’s earliest discs were made for Decca on
18 February 1941. The chosen piece, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8, was made
when he was 18 and violin partner Ida Haendel 13. They never performed
together on the concert stage but only in the studio. Firstly it must
be said that excessive filtering has been applied to these wartime Deccas.
Notoriously noisy though these discs can be, far too much treble has
been cut and the result is something of a trial to listen to – Dutton
has shown how it is often possible to deal sympathetically with Deccas
of this vintage without the severe frequency losses entailed here. As
for the performance, even given the youth of the performers and the
rather mercurial nature of the partnership (they’d never met before)
it’s still a disappointing performance. There is a thoughtless, relentless
quality to the first movement and whilst there are nice touches – some
rather smeary ones too from Haendel in the slow movement – it’s a spirited
teenage performance but really not much more. In the slightly later
recorded Albeniz, which made up the final side of the Beethoven, there
are some decidedly "noises off" bowing moments from Haendel.
Of exceptional interest are the two Liszt Petrarch Sonnets as they come
from what is believed to be Mewton-Wood’s last BBC recital. Pianist
Geoffrey Tozer makes the point, quoted in the booklet notes, that these
are vehement to the point of combustibility. They are, it’s true, radically
complex and spontaneous and a remarkable survival.
CD2 contains the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 2, Shostakovich
No. 1 and Schumann’s Kinderszenen. He recorded all three Tchaikovsky
Piano Concertos but this is possibly the pick of them. In Siloti’s well-known
edition this is a tour de force, a veritable arsenal of pianistic brilliance.
There’s great delicacy amid the bravura, deep reserves, yet again, of
technical prowess and some coruscating passagework in the first movement.
The sound is now considerably improved than on its original appearance,
though the orchestra, led by Peter Rybar - whose violin solos are musicianly
but thin of tone – is conscientious but hardly of comparable luxuriance
to the soloist. It’s a disappointing feature of his concerto recordings,
disappointing but hardly fatal, that he worked with rather provincial
orchestras, albeit with the estimable Walter Goehr in charge. Nevertheless
there is some truly magnificent playing from Mewton-Wood and this is
one of the highlights of the entire set. He, together with the athletic
and formidable trumpeter Harry Sevenstern, makes an adroit match in
the Shostakovich, a performance that really takes off. They are spikier,
stronger and more dramatic than the otherwise attractive pairing of
Eileen Joyce, the Hallé and Leslie Heward. With Goehr once again
in charge the performance has real élan. Mewton-Wood had recorded
Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques for Decca in 1948/49 (released on Decca
AK 2361/3). In about 1950 he was privately recorded playing Kinderszenen.
The sleeve notes show the four record labels – Joint Broadcasting Committee
discs numbered NPH 260-263. He never recorded the piece commercially
and so, as with the Petrarch Sonnets, this is something of a coup. It’s
a fast performance, sometimes disconcertingly so, but not unfeeling.
He rushes Traümerei somewhat and here, as elsewhere on these fascinating
discs, whilst he tries to create a structural unity of the work there
are moments where his phrasing can be a little plain and also a little
cursory.
The final CD features Busoni’s magnificent Second Violin
Sonata. The violinist is the eminent Max Rostal and the performance
dates from 1952, the year before the pianist’s death, and was issued
on the Westminster and Argo labels. Rostal was a fellow Decca recorder
– he and Franz Osborn had recorded some Beethoven Sonatas for the company
and would, in truth, have been a far more obvious candidate for the
Eighth Sonata than Haendel, as would incidentally either Sammons or
Grinke, also contracted to Decca at the time, had maturity and experience
been the criteria. He and Mewton-Wood make an impressive but not unassailable
case for the work. The pianist is in tremendous form, his intellectual
capacities for assimilating new scores probably as advanced as his violinist
colleague’s but with a technique palpably superior. There are distinct
intonational worries with Rostal and his occasionally thin and parched
tone can grate, especially in the first two movements. He comes into
rather better form, thankfully, in the last, a profound 26-minute meditation,
in which Mewton-Wood displays convincing control of architecture, magnificent
depth of tonal variety and excellent co-ordination with his partner.
The variations in the final movement with their fugal entries and the
succeeding restatement of the Bach Chorale Wie wohl ist mir, O Freund
der Seele are all judged with unerring rightness by the pianist
who supports Rostal’s increasingly successful playing with forceful
sensitivity. The final two pieces are undisputed classics of the gramophone,
Tippett’s Boyhood’s End and The Heart’s Assurance in
which the pianist accompanies Peter Pears, recordings also dating from
1952. Britten had played at the premiere of the former and Pears commissioned
the latter. By this time Mewton-Wood often replaced an increasingly
busy Britten as Pears’ accompanist. These world premiere recordings
were made for Argo and are as profoundly shot through with insight and
understanding as the day they were made. The co-ordination between Pears
and Mewton-Wood, physically uneasy because of the cramped and unusual
recording location, is unrivalled and the pianism is almost intuitively
alert to the melismatic writing in Boyhood’s End as it is to
the perhaps greater challenge, interpretively and mechanically, of The
Heart’s Assurance.
These are very special discs. They enshrine a great
talent cut down in early manhood whose achievements were obvious but
whose greater future was lost to us. ABC’s booklet is packed with biographical
information, to much of which I’m indebted, and also some evocative
photographs. The transfers have generally been effected with skill –
points of contention otherwise noted – and the set stands as a worthy
celebration of Mewton-Wood’s lasting place in recorded history.
Jonathan Woolf
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Noel Mewton-Wood,
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