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.