George Frederick Pinto

George Frederick Pinto

Genres: classical period, romantic period

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About George Frederick Pinto

George Pinto (September 25, 1785 – March 23, 1806) was an English composer and keyboard virtuoso. His father, Samuel Sanders (or Saunders) died young, and it was from his mother, Julia Sanders (née Pinto) that he took not only his surname but also his musical upbringing. His mother's father, Thomas Pinto (1714-c.1780) was a well-known London violinist. Piano was, from the outset, Pinto's second instrument, but although his concert appearances were mainly as a violinist, he admitted himself that the piano was his favoured instrument. In January 1803 at Phillip Corri's Edinburgh concerts, Pinto took the place of an injured Corri as soloist for piano concertos, at this time still only 17 years old. One of Pinto's fellow students was none other than John Field, with whom he gave a concert in 1800 and became good friends with, even dedicating a sonata to his 'friend John Field' with whom he shared a love of J. S. Bach. Pinto’s contribution to the piano repertory did not go unnoticed; indeed Salomon later suggested that had he lived longer, Pinto could have gone on to become an English Mozart. His works fall into two categories; earlier and later compositions, which are stylistically quite different. In the earlier works especially, Pinto’s inventiveness and outside-of-the-box thinking leads to some musical developments which are well ahead of their time. Many features set him apart from his contemporaries, not just figurative and harmonic daring, but also in his manipulation of larger structural issues. Pinto's health seems to have started to deteriorate around 1805. He gave his last public appearance in London (at Mademoiselle Merelle's Concert in Willis's Rooms in June) in 1804, and in 1805 he had to withdraw from a benefit concert in Edinburgh. Some evidence suggests that he may have caught tuberculosis whilst in Edinburgh, but in any case he reportedly gave only one of a scheduled series of concerts at Oxford in November 1805. He died in Chelsea, London.

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