THE concert pianist and teacher Alfred Kitchin had a direct link to Brahms. His own teacher had studied with the composer, and passed on the master’s wishes on how his music should be performed. Kitchin played Brahms at slower tempi than other pianists, in accord with the wishes of the composer himself. “Remember you’re a grand-student of Brahms,” Kitchin would tell his own students.

He was born in 1910 in London of Anglo-Swiss parentage, and his musicality became evident so early that he was extemporising at the piano when he was barely four years old. He made his first public appearance at the Royal Opera House at the age of nine.

The family moved to Switzerland in 1923, and as a young teenager he became a part-time student at the local conservatoire, where his achievements soon pointed to a career as a concert pianist.

So he was sent to study at the Leipzig Conservatoire with Robert Teichmuller, who had studied with Brahms.

Kitchin was repeatedly singled out as soloist in his five years at the conservatoire. When he performed the Brahms B flat concerto for the Centenary Festival in Leipzig in 1933, a unanimous press hailed the breadth and maturity of his playing. But when the Nazis tore down a statue of Mendelssohn, Kitchin protested at the new political order and took the first train out of Leipzig.

He headed for Vienna, the city that was to become his musical-spiritual homeland, and continued his studies under the guidance of Carl Steiner and Paul Weingarten, who brought him to the concert platform.

He soon made his debut as a professional concert artist, successfully managed by Ernst Kanitz, a discerning impresario who was later to perish in the Holocaust. A series of extended tours of Europe, from Rome to Budapest, Warsaw to The Hague, continued until 1938, when the Germans annexed Austria. In December that year he returned to London, aware of imminent war, and offered his services to the country, forsaking his concert career. Enlisting in the British Army meant an almost total severance from the piano. He served in military intelligence, but in later life he gave little away about this period, taking very seriously the terms of the Official Secrets Act.

The task of rebuilding a musical career appeared daunting, but in 1944, when victory appeared on the horizon, he began playing again and Dame Myra Hess invited him to give some of her famous National Gallery Midday Concerts. Leave to appear in these and other concerts, and to broadcast, was granted, and Kitchin was able to start picking up the threads of his professional life once again.

In 1948 he was invited to play the Rachmaninov C minor and Brahms B flat concertos with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The success of these prompted invitations to perform and broadcast in England, Switzerland and Austria.

The critics applauded. In Berne, the Neue Berner Zeitung declared: “He showed by his playing of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues that he is a musical architect of the first order.” And in Hamburg, Die Welt noted: “He belongs to the category of genuine musicians whose phenomenal ability and integrity of approach command unqualified admiration and respect.”

Throughout his life Kitchin had a strong commitment to the classic-romantic repertoire and perhaps above all to the line of Austro-German lyric music that runs from Schubert through Schumann to Brahms. Although his repertoire was extensive, from the 18th to the early 20th century, he had a special love for the intimate and for miniature utterances in music. In particular he loved the playful, often child-like character pieces of Schumann and the intermezzi of Brahms with their introspective melancholy.

After one Brahms recital in the 1930s, a woman who had studied with the composer came up to him. She said: “How wonderful. It was just like Brahms.” She gave him a photograph of herself and Brahms, which Kitchin kept on his piano for decades afterwards. He also had links with composers of his own time, including Samuel Barber, with whom he performed the cello sonata, with Barber on cello.

Eventually, in 1961, he returned to London after an invitation to take a chair at Trinity College of Music, London’s second oldest conservatoire. It is no exaggeration to say that he was revered and loved by the hundreds of students who had the fortune to be taught by him. Pupils came from as far as Japan to learn from him.

His passion for music was infectious, but his qualities as a teacher extended to an unusual interest in each student as an individual. They appreciated his warmth, modesty and special ability to make each one feel as if he or she was his most important student. He saw the best in people, regularly giving extra lessons at no charge and allowing students to live in his house when they could not find or afford their own accommodation. He always inspired them to broaden their horizons by visiting art galleries and taking an interest in the world around them.

He is survived by his wife, Therese.

Alfred Kitchin, concert pianist and teacher, was born on January 23, 1910. He died on December 12, 2003, aged 93.