Alan Hazeldine was a conductor and pianist who become the mainstay of the North London Chorus for more than 20 years and then founded the Corinthian Chamber Orchestra of which he was the guiding spirit for the rest of his life.

Alan Graham Hazeldine was born in Glasgow in 1948, the younger of two brothers, to Robert Hazeldine, a fishmonger, and his wife Catherine, and studied piano with Wight (Jack) Henderson at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama where he graduated in 1969. He was a prodigious talent, giving a superb performance of the Liszt B minor sonata at the annual governors’ recital prize in his final year.

He then went on to study conducting across Europe, first with his mentor, Vilem Tausky (obituary, March 18, 2004), at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, and later with the Bulgarian Konstantin Iliev and the Romanian Sergiu Celibidache. As a result he worked extensively in Bulgaria, especially with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra with which he gave the first performance in Eastern Europe of Vaughan Williams’s 6th Symphony. He was also guest conductor with the Vratsa Symphony Orchestra of Bulgaria and appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish and English Ballet Companies. For a period he directed the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Hazeldine taught conducting at the Guildhall School and was the founder conductor of the North London Chorus, directing about 60 concerts at such venues as St John’s, Smith Square and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Perhaps his greatest legacy is the Corinthian Chamber Orchestra, which he founded in 1995 and which became his family towards the end of his life.

The Corinthians regularly performed at St James’s Piccadilly. Among their notable concerts was one celebrating their tenth anniversary at which they played the overture to The Magic Flute, Elgar’s cello concerto and Beethoven’s 5th symphony, and another toasting Hazeldine’s 60th birthday at which they played Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Mozart’s piano concerto No 20 and the 4th symphony by Brahms.

Hazeldine was a shy, unassuming and kind man who could nevertheless be steely and rather frightening if you got on the wrong side of him. He was at his happiest when taking rehearsals with his orchestral “family” during which his love of teaching was all too evident; his standards exacting.

Hazeldine was married to the mezzo-soprano Alison Mary Sutton in 1975. Although the marriage was dissolved in 1988 they remained firm friends. There were no children.

Alan Hazeldine, conductor and pianist, was born on July 5, 1948. He died of cancer on November 10, 2008, aged 60