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Gwyneth George, cellist - obituary

Cellist who played at Wigmore Hall and taught in Jamaica Gwyneth George by Angus McBean

6:55PM GMT 23 Feb 2016

Gwyneth George, the cellist, who has died aged 95, was heard in British concert halls during the 1960s and 1970s; she formed a successful partnership with the Argentinian pianist Alberto Portugheis and in 1979 gave the premiere of the Five Nocturnes and Cadenzas that were written for her by the Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott.

Her only commercial disc, of cello sonatas by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich accompanied by Portugheis for the Unicorn label in 1971, proved popular with Gramophone’s critic, who described the Shostakovich as “the most searching account of the work I have met on LP”.

She gave a number of successful recitals at London concert halls; after one, in 1961 when she was accompanied by Ernest Lush, a critic praised the “vitality and character in her cello playing”, noting the “valuable strength” of her tone. Meanwhile, her teaching career took her to London and Jamaica.

Gwyneth George was born on the Mumbles on May 27 1920, and was educated in Swansea. Her father was a businessman and amateur painter who travelled extensively, bringing back tales of distant lands that delighted Gwyneth and her younger sister, a talented violinist. Their mother was a pianist who formed a promising trio with her daughters but never fully accepted her younger daughter’s decision to stop playing the violin at a relatively young age.

Gwyneth studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and later won an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where she was a student of Ivor James. During the Second World War she was drafted into a bomb-making factory near London, work that the peace-loving cellist disliked intensely. 
She continued her studies with Enrico Mainardi in Rome and with Paul Tortelier in Paris, and in 1950 made her debut at the Wigmore Hall accompanied by Murray Brown in a programme that bravely included the premiere of a gritty cello sonata by the Australian composer Tristram Cary.

During the 1950s she was heard around the country, including, in 1958, a return to the Wigmore Hall, this time accompanied by Maurice Cole in music by Brahms, Shostakovich and Boccherini which, according to one critic, revealed “an ample tone, a sense of presentation, good phrasing from her bow arm, and a feeling for the instrument’s rhapsodical character”. By the early 1960s, however, she was a professor of music in Kingston, Jamaica.

Returning to Europe she continued to combine performing with teaching at Trinity College of Music, London. Portugheis, who was living in London, now became her regular duo partner. They often returned to her native Wales, giving up to four performances a day in different schools. Together they performed music by Bach, Beethoven and Franck at the Wigmore Hall in 1972.

She appeared at St John’s Smith Square in 1979. Her programme included the 16-minute unaccompanied work that Hoddinott had written for her. She repeated it in New York the following year, but thereafter it was rarely heard in public again.

In 1998 she gave her name to the Gwyneth George Award, which is presented annually by the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe to a successful chamber music group.

Her recording of Shostakovich and Rachmaninov was re-released a few years ago by the Guild label, delighting connoisseurs, who declared that it had stood the test of time.

Gwyneth George, who was unmarried, retained her good looks and warmth to the end of her life, enthusing friends with her kindness and determined optimism.

Gwyneth George, born May 27 1920, died February 16 2016


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