Frederick Septimus Kelly, born in Sydney in 1881, was on the way to becoming one of Australia’s most important early composers when he was killed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The three works recorded here – for the first time – underline just how grievous was that loss, not only for Australia but for the musical world more generally. Kelly’s D minor Violin Sonata is an astonishingly assured work for a twenty-year-old student composer; his Serenade for flute and piano exudes good-natured charm; and the two surviving movements of his Piano Trio – which have a Brahmsian intensity – suggest that he would have been one of the major composers of the twentieth century.

“valuable in extending appreciation of this area of his compositional life. The notes are everything one could want in a project of this kind; Christopher Latham deals largely with the biography and the context in which the pieces were composed whilst Alex Wilson focuses on the specifics of the pieces played. He plays with disarming candour and charm and, as one would expect of him – who has performed Butterworth, Gurney, Ernest Farrar, Cecil Coles and others – he is a stylish exponent and has been finely recorded.” – Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International (Kelly: Piano Music, TOCC0524)