Gay pianist’s life and loves

Gay love stories are often lost among the abundance of erotic novels and pornography magazines but while I was browsing in the Darlinghurst Bookshop I discovered Sonia Orchard’s debut novel The Virtuoso, which caught my attention and then my heart.

After reading an article on Noel Mewton-Wood several years ago, Orchard was drawn by his charisma and brilliance, as well as the tragedy of his life.

So, who was Noel Mewtown-Wood? This Melbourne-born pianist rose to stardom on the British classical music scene during WW2. He was the Brian Kinney (character from Queer as Folk) of the 1950s -” debonair, gay and extremely promiscuous.

He was a tortured artist, but also friendly, funny and down-to-earth -” I had to know more about him, Orchard declared.

He was passionate, romantic, and very much a man about town, shall we say. Apparently the police came around for -˜cups of tea and a chat’ quite often, so his exploits must have been quite well known.

Written from the point of view of an ex-lover, the book tells the story of his ability to touch, inspire and ultimately devastate those who loved him.

My narrator is fictional, but he’s telling a story of real events. I’ve also relied very heavily on anecdotes, and conversations people have told me about, but I’ve often had to change the context of these in order to work them into the novel, Orchard said.

I’ve spoken to a few of his ex-lovers who told me a few between-the-sheets stories -” but out of respect for the dead, I think I’ll leave them off these pages.

I specialise in making people cry. A lot of people were angry with me after my first book [a memoir, Something More Wonderful] because it had them in tears on the train on the way to work. I hope this one does the same.

Mewton-Wood never mentioned his father to any of his London friends. Orchard said everyone assumed he was dead. But she later discovered his father was jailed for embezzlement when Mewton-Wood was nine years old, five years before he moved to London with his mother.

Mewtown-Wood, whose lifestyle was incompatible with 1950s Australia, committed suicide at
the age of 31.

It was an extremely difficult time to be gay. Gay men were hauled in every week in London and sentenced to years of hard labour. He was relatively lucky in that the music world was quite accepting of homosexuality -” so many of the big names of the day were gay, Orchard said.

But in 1953, during -˜The Great Purge’, the police started arresting aristocracy and other people they’d previously turned a blind eye to. Mewton-Wood lived with a male partner and was also promiscuous, so he was really treading on thin ice.

Even though this must have been extremely difficult, I’m not sure how much it contributed to his suicide -” but you’ll have to read the book to find out more.

info: The Virtuoso by Sonia Orchard is available from all good bookstores.