Pianist and academic;

Born: July 12, 1931; Died: April 11, 2013.

Michael Gough Matthews, who has died aged 81, was a musical academic whose long career took him around the world in an enormous variety of roles.

Apart from successive appointments as professor of piano, registrar, director of studies, vice-director, director and eventually vice-president of the Royal College of Music in London, he found time to advise the Sultan of Oman on establishing the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra, give master classes in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong, adjudicate international piano competitions and, in 1964, set up a junior school for gifted children under the auspices of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

It was a life where, clearly, nothing stood still, even though Debrett's listed his principal recreation as gardening.

His Glasgow post thus found itself placed between his debut piano recital (the first of many) at London's Wigmore Hall and the directorship of the junior department at the RCM.

Dedicated to promoting the London college's overseas activities, he organised concerts at more than 40 embassies and high commissions sponsored by Jaguar Cars, for which he acted as music consultant.

Nor was this all. He was on the management board of the London International String Quartet Competition, the Musical Study Group EEC and the Comite d'Honneur Presence de l'Art in Paris.

He recorded three CDs of piano music by Brahms and Faure. He was on the council of the Purcell Tercentenary Trust, was vice-president of the Royal College of Organists and held appointments with the Royal Choral Society, Musicians Benevolent Fund and National Youth Choir.

Earlier, his own youthful years had similarly seethed with life. His link with the RCM was forged at the age of eight with a junior exhibition award to study piano. Advised against evacuation during the Second World War, he travelled to London throughout the Blitz from his parents' home in Essex. At 15 he won an open major scholarship to study with Frank Merrick, and by 1955 had won a prize in the Chopin International Piano Competition, followed by a Chopin fellowship in Warsaw.

On his retirement in 1993, he continued to teach and adjudicate and in 2010 was awarded an honorary doctorate of music by the Prince of Wales.