The Austrian-born Georg Tintner achieved fame as a conductor but considered himself a ‘composer who conducts’, with an ambition ‘to write beautiful music’. His early works are tonal and Romantically influenced, while later music – notably the Violin Sonata – is of great lyrical beauty. Although Tintner led a varied and successful career on four continents, he found himself unable to continue composing – the result of personal disasters and the loss of his culture and musical language. He was one of the many ‘lost composers’ of the wartime era, ending his life tragically in 1999.