George Malcolm (musician)

George John Malcolm CBE KSG (28 February 1917 – 10 October 1997) was an English pianist, organist, composer, harpsichordist, and conductor.

Malcolm's first instrument was the piano, and his first teacher was a nun who recognised his talent and recommended him to the Royal College of Music at the age of seven, where he studied under Kathleen McQuitty FRCM until he was 19. On his return from the RAF after the War he studied with Herbert Fryer. He attended Wimbledon College, and went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford.

During the Second World War he was a bandleader. After the war, he developed a career as a harpsichordist, although he continued to make occasional appearances as a pianist in chamber music, notably with the Dennis Brain Wind Ensemble. He left few recordings of his piano playing (one interesting example is the first performance of the Gordon Jacob Sextet, written for the group).

In the 1950s he participated in annual concerts featuring four harpsichordists, the three others being Thurston Dart, Denis Vaughan and Eileen Joyce. In 1957 this group also recorded two of Vivaldi's Concertos for Four Harpsichords, one in a Bach arrangement, with the Pro Arte Orchestra under Boris Ord. Malcolm, Dart and Joyce also recorded Bach's Concerto in C for Three Harpsichords. In 1967, he appeared with Eileen Joyce, Geoffrey Parsons and Simon Preston in a 4-harpsichord concert with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Neville Marriner in the Royal Festival Hall.

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