UK’s Fitzwilliam Quartet Violist Steps Down After 56 Years

The quartet’s founding member and violist Alan George will leave the group following a 50+ year tenure

Founded in 1968 by four Cambridge undergraduates, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet currently comprises violinists Lucy Russell and Andrew Roberts, violist Alan George, and cellist Ursula Smith. 

Alongside Russell, George is a founding member of the quartet and has remained its only viola player for the past 56 years. He is also one of the longest-serving quartet players in Britain. 

The quartet is now actively seeking George’s successor; more news on the next appointment will follow in due course. 

Hailing from Cornwall in the UK, George studied violin with Colin Sauer at Dartington Hall, viola with Herbert Downes in London, and chamber music with Sidney Griller at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1968 he won an open scholarship to King’s College Cambridge, where the Fitzwilliam Quartet was formed. 

From 1976, he served for 11 years as principal viola with John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Until 1988, he was a lecturer in music and director of the chamber orchestra at the University of York. 

He has also been a viola tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music, and a visiting lecturer and examiner at many colleges and universities around the world. In 1981, he was made an Honorary Doctor of Music at Bucknell University and was similarly honoured by the University of York in 2006.

His other engagements include serving as conductor of the Academy of St. Olave's Chamber Orchestra since 2009 and performing as principal viola in the Southern Sinfonia. 

The author of four studies of Shostakovich’s chamber music and numerous articles and program notes, he has presented talks on BBC Radio and at various festivals and concert venues in Britain and the U.S. 

He is also a trustee of the Jessie’s Fund charity — a memorial to his daughter Jessica, who died of a brain tumor in 1994 — which helps sick children through the therapeutic power of music, and which the Fitzwilliam Quartet has supported in its concerts and recordings. 

George plays on a c. 1740-41 viola crafted in Cremona (possibly by one of the Guarneri family). His other instruments include one made for him in 1995 by Roger Hansell.

“After 56 years, founder member Alan George has stepped aside, drawing to a close an extraordinary and exceptional career as a violist in the Fitzwilliam Quartet,” the group wrote on its website. “We are indebted to Alan and will miss his wealth of knowledge and experience.”