Howard Davis was a violinist of distinction, best known as the leader for more than 35 years of the Alberni Quartet. A member of the ensemble from its foundation by four students at the Royal Academy of Music until ill- health forced his retirement a little over a year ago, he was greatly respected both as a refined player and as an inspirational and influential teacher.

Howard Thomas Davis was born in the Staffordshire mining village of Bridgtown in 1940, one of two children of the village cobbler. His father was a passionate music lover whose constant playing of records and live concerts on the radio awakened in the young Davis an early interest in the instrumental repertoire. He took up the violin at 9, the beneficiary of a government-funded scheme which provided instruments and tuition to those who might not otherwise be able to afford them.

He showed immediate talent, and as a 13-year-old boy at Rugeley Grammar School he won a scholarship which enabled him to study with Ernest Element in Birmingham. Element, an eminent chamber musician and leader of the Element Quartet, was a great influence on his pupil’s later predilection for quartet playing; but for Davis, a keen artist, the weekly trips to Birmingham were as significant for the opportunity they afforded to visit the city’s art gallery.

Davis won a scholarship at 18 to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he studied with Sydney Humphreys and Frederick Grinke. In 1961 he and three other students formed a string quartet, which they named the Alberni Quartet after the Canadian birthplace of the original leader, Dennis Simons. They were extremely fortunate that the ensemble’s foundation coincided with the return from North America of Sidney Griller, the founder of the Griller Quartet and one of the greatest chamber players this country has produced; Griller, a legendarily strict but perceptive coach of young quartets, became their mentor.

In 1963 the Alberni Quartet received help of an unusual nature when the Essex new town of Harlow invited the ensemble to become its quartet in residence. This was not an obvious appointment — none of the players having any connection with the town — but was a great success, offering the quartet some degree of financial security and an opportunity for four players of talent and energy to take part in educational projects. The town council also commissioned music from composers on their behalf, including a quartet by Alan Rawsthorne.

In 1968, after the most significant of several changes of personnel, Howard Davis moved from the second violinist’s chair to lead the Alberni Quartet; he was to remain as leader until his retirement 38 years later. By now the quartet had gained a considerable reputation, attracting the attention of Benjamin Britten, who after hearing them play offered to coach the ensemble in his own quartets.

When Britten’s friend Mstislav Rostropovich returned from Russia bearing the scores of Shostakovich’s Ninth and Tenth Quartets, still unperformed in the West, it was to the Albernis that the British premieres of both works were entrusted.

The quartet became well known internationally in the 1970s, partly thanks to well-received recordings, and partly owing to extensive travel which took them to North and South America and the Far East as well as all over Europe; in 1987 they became the first Western quartet to tour China since the Cultural Revolution.

Although the success of the quartet left little time for other activities, Davis was also for some time a member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He also had a successful and long-lasting duo partnership with his wife, the harpsichordist Virginia Black, whom he had met when the two were students at the RAM. A born teacher, he was appointed professor at the same institution in 1982, where he rapidly developed an impressive stable of students and a reputation for inspired pedagogy: many of his students have gone on to major careers.

Always keen to help young players, Davis found it nearly impossible to turn down new pupils, and often took them on only on the understanding that his many other commitments could make the frequency of lessons unpredictable. On one occasion a private pupil asked to bring a friend to a lesson so that they could rehearse the Bach concerto for two violins; Davis, impressed by the standard of the friend’s playing, asked who taught her. “You do,” was the unexpected reply.

He died of a respiratory disease. His wife and their two sons survive him.

Howard Davis, violinist, was born on April 9, 1940. He died on February 5, 2008, aged 67