Did ‘the British Mozart’ drink himself to death? George Frederick Pinto (1785–1806) was a child prodigy both as performer – on violin and piano – and as composer. But he was only twenty when he died, probably from tuberculosis or from what one writer called ‘dissipation’. He is thus is one of the major ‘what-ifs’ of music history: the music he composed in the little time he had reveals a composer as gifted as almost any of his contemporaries.

These three quirky and inventive violin sonatas – receiving their first recordings here – sit on the cusp of Romanticism, their Classical elegance warmed by a graceful lyricism that looks forward to Schubert.

Australian Elizabeth Sellars was a winner of the inaugural John Tunnell Trust and the Royal Overseas League Ensemble Prize and Miller Trophy. As soloist and chamber musician, she toured extensively in the UK, broadcast for the BBC, and performed throughout Europe with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Now resident in Melbourne, Elizabeth is a member of Sutherland Piano Trio and Co-ordinator of Strings at Monash University.

Kenji Fujimura has recorded the complete piano music of William Hurlstone (Toccata Classics TOCC0289) which was immediately made a MusicWeb International ‘Recording of the Month’. His own compositions have been most recently performed in the USA, Australia, Singapore and Indonesia. He is also a highly respected pedagogue; and is currently Acting Head of School, Co-ordinator of Classical Performance and Chamber Music at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University. In 2015 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.