I smiled when I remembered the spherical trigonometry course taught at Glasgow University by Archie Roy. The group of us sitting in front of him in 1969 took weeks to realise why we could not keep up, before noticing that Archie was drawing the circles with his left hand, writing with his right, and explaining everything all at once. It was no mean task just to keep up with your notes, limited to a single hand. We, poor souls, lacked Archie's gifts, but appreciated his sly mischievousness. Great circles; great man.

Pianist who played with limpid tone, natural rhythm and clear phrasing

The pianist Katharina Wolpe, who has died aged 81, belonged to the last generation of musicians to escape from Nazi Austria and Germany in their youth and to carry with them the Austro-German interpretative tradition. Her first recital, given when she was 16 after arriving in Britain, included the Piano Sonata (1910) by Berg; the composer she identified with most from her early years onwards was Schubert.

She played the other great composers of the first Viennese school – Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – and later, Romantic composers, notably Schumann and Brahms, with limpid tone, natural rhythm and clear phrasing. There was a sense of deep feeling, never imposed on the music, but derived from a profound understanding of its harmonic structure, polyphonic texture and form.

Her perfectly shaped, eloquent playing of the Arietta from Beethoven's last piano sonata and the way the increasingly virtuosic variations built on it sticks in the memory. So does the controlled passion and the strange, almost expressionless serenity that alternated with it in Schubert's three posthumously published piano pieces, D946.

On the way to the second Viennese school, Scriabin on the one hand and Prokofiev on the other provided perhaps surprising detours. But Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were as important in Katharina's musical world as their Viennese predecessors. She had the musical insight and technical command to make their music sound like the natural extension of the earlier classics and romantics into expressionism, and then into a constructivism that remained humanly expressive rather than experimental and cerebral. She was, for instance, one of the few pianists who could reveal the essential lyricism and continuity underlying the apparent fragmentation of Webern's Variations, Opus 27, and to make a single sonata-like structure out of the post-tonal expressivity of the first, the brooding introversion of the second and the virtuosity of the third of Schoenberg's Opus 11 piano pieces.

Katharina was born in Vienna, to Ola Okuniewska, a sensitive and original painter, and the composer and teacher Stefan Wolpe. Her father migrated to Israel when Katharina was still a small child, and then settled in the US. In 1938, Katharina and her mother escaped from Vienna, remained in hiding for eight months and walked to Serbia, where they stayed in a relative's house before moving on.

Katharina began to play the piano in a refugee camp, later revealing that the music of Schubert had made her not feel homeless, and so kept her in one piece. In Switzerland her mother eventually abandoned her, and Katharina suffered all sorts of vicissitudes and adventures. In Paris she met her first husband, the sculptor and painterWilliam Turnbull, and went to Britain, where her mother rejoined her.

After hearing her play at a London club, Humphrey Bogart paid for her Wigmore Hall debut. As her performing career developed, she also began to teach, eventually taking the advanced piano class at Morley College, London, for many years.

Her Proms debut came with the first performance of a work by Elisabeth Lutyens, Symphonies, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in July 1961. A month later she was back, having learned the Schoenberg Piano Concerto at very short notice when another soloist dropped out, and went on to give Proms performances of concertos by Mozart and Beethoven.

She married the conductor Lawrence Leonard and, when he became the principal conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Alberta (1968-73), she accompanied him to Canada, where she became pianist in residence at the University of Toronto, and taught there frequently after returning to London. Both her marriages ended in divorce.

An eloquent champion of her father's music, Katharina brought out both its roots in the second Viennese school and its multi-faceted modernity, influenced by jazz and other non-classical musics. Iain Hamilton was one of the composers who, along with Lutyens, wrote music especially for her. In later years, her humanitarian politics as well as her love of all the arts led her to form a performing partnership with Vanessa Redgrave.

Katharina was wonderful company, a warm and generous woman who will be missed by her many friends, colleagues and students.

• Katharina Wolpe, pianist, born 9 September 1931; died 9 February 2013

I met Bob Godfrey in 1952 when I joined the William Larkin studio in Mayfair. To relieve the boredom of the industrial instructional films we were making, Bob and I started working on cartoon films in his basement in Tufnell Park, north London. In 1955 we left Larkin's and started Biographic Films, specifically to make commercials for ITV. We had the first cartoon commercial on the first night of ITV in September 1955.

For Courage Ales we made a series of live-action ads parodying silent cinema. The commercials, complete with title cards, followed the adventures of a villain, a lady and a dashing hero – the last played by Bob himself. They typically ended with the rescued damsel telling the hero to claim his reward: he always chose the ale. We filmed one behind King's Cross station and another in Bognor Regis; I was left with the equipment when the tide came in.

We met Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and produced animated inserts for their TV sketch series The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d; A Show Called Fred; and Son of Fred. The shows were live and our animations gave the performers time to change costumes. Spike would call and say: "Give me 10 minutes of your usual rubbish." Then Richard Lester, the producer, would call: "We can only afford five minutes." Through Spike and Peter we met the comedian Michael Bentine and made cartoon sequences for his TV series It's a Square World (1960-64).

In 1957 we moved to larger premises in Dean Street, central London, and our colleagues from Larkin's, Vera Linnecar and Nancy Hanna, joined us. Bob directed a cartoon short called Polygamous Polonius, which was shown at the Royal Film Performance in 1960 with a feature called the Last Angry Man. We never did get to meet the Queen. The film-maker Bruce Lacey, Joe McGrath and Bob acted in a number of pop videos as characters called The Three Nits. The films were shown in a programme for ITV called Cool for Cats. Around 1964, he decided he wanted to concentrate on acting and he left Biographic to form his own film company.

Bob was not only a brilliant cartoonist who pushed the boundaries, he was also a nice chap, and very funny. He was continually coming up with daft ideas. Bob wanted to make the audience laugh, and we always ended up laughing, too.

Animator of Henry's Cat and Roobarb, he won an Oscar for his short film Great

Bob Godfrey, who has died aged 91, was the godfather of British animation, celebrated for short films including the initially banned Kama Sutra Rides Again (1972) and the Oscar-winning Great (1975) as well as his children's TV series Roobarb (1974), narrated by Richard Briers, and the Bafta-winning Henry's Cat (1982-93), narrated by Bob. His seemingly simple drawings drew their strength from posture and gesture and his constant innovations in style were the result of shoestring budgets. He was in every way a true amateur film-maker who produced, directed, animated, acted in and did the voiceovers for his films. His influence on leading animators cannot be overestimated: Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) worked in his basement; Terry Gilliam made his Monty Python animations overnight in Bob's studio, as he could not afford his own place; and Nick Park credits The Do-It-Yourself Animation Show, presented by Bob in the 1970s, as a major influence.

Other successful producers and directors kept their awards and certificates in prominent places; Bob's were in his loo. He was always very approachable and was never happier than when surrounded by students; he even took his classes to the pub. His studio had a lifesize hanging effigy of Margaret Thatcher. On receiving a letter from the then prime minister, and fearing the worst, he was surprised to find he had got the MBE, appointed in 1986.

Bob was born in West Maitland, in New South Wales, Australia, and emigrated to the UK with his parents a few years later. He went to school in Ilford, north-east London, and attended art school in Leyton. Work as a graphic artist for the manufacturer Lever Brothers in the 1930s was followed by a spell with the GB Animation outfit financed by J Arthur Rank. As a Royal Marine during the second world war, he took part in the D-day landings.

He began to concentrate on animation in the early 1950s and drew upon influences ranging from Donald McGill's seaside postcards to the Goons. He particularly liked satirising political figures and British attitudes to sex. Small men and dominant women played their part, and his loose style of drawing belied his artistic skill. It was his speciality to combine live action with various animation styles. He directed and acted in several live-action films; enjoyed bit parts in the Beatles films A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965); and won a Bafta award for Henry 9 til 5 (1970).

The anecdotes of Bob's life abound. There was the time that Yoko Ono paid him £5 to photograph his derriere for her exhibition. His irreverence often landed him in trouble. A film laboratory refused to develop a scene that had the Queen singing Good Evening Friends as a finale. His cutout technique of animation featured photographs from magazines that were used without permission, leading to threats by photographers. He also pushed the limits of the medium: Kama Sutra Rides Again was banned but it later earned an Oscar nomination, as did Dream Doll (1979) and Small Talk (1994).

His unfulfilled ambition was to make a feature film – it nearly came true with a project called Jumbo – but he was at least partly satisfied with Great, a half-hour cartoon on the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, voiced by Briers. Despite the Oscar it brought Bob, he rarely made money on his films. The fact that he survived in the industry was in part due to it being more fun to work with him on ideas he was enthusiastic about than it was to work in a studio making dull commercials. It was taken for granted that if you worked with Bob you would almost certainly be used as a cartoon character in one of his movies, and there was a more than even chance that you wouldn't get paid on time.

The financial situation changed a little for the better when Roobarb, made for the BBC, took off. In the series, Roobarb, a green dog, sets out to achieve certain goals which are meaningful to him, but considered useless by his arch-enemy, Custard, a pink cat. The onlooking birds take great delight in seeing Roobarb fail, yet he lives to fight another day. When the BBC wanted a new series of Roobarb, Bob asked if I would write a series to suit the same audience. I put forward the idea of Henry's Cat, and it was accepted, but this time he decided to finance it himself. The series enabled Bob's studio to keep going during a difficult time for the animation industry.

Bob's love of ridiculing pretentious attitudes was the underlying theme of both Roobarb and Henry's Cat. Henry's Cat is never seen in profile, and he doesn't have a name, as the first story was based on Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. The boy, Henry, got lost in the second story and was never part of the TV series or the published books. Henry's Cat also sets out to achieve impossible goals, but has a group of friends who aid and abet him in his objectives. Unlike Roobarb, most of the Henry's Cat stories have happy endings. The cat's face is made up of an M (for the ears), two eyes (giving an I), an O (for the nose) and a W (for the mouth) to form the word MIOW.

I once had a phone call from Bob with good news and bad news. The good news was that the studio's computer had been stolen. The bad news was that they had caught the thief and got it back. As the industry moved from traditional animation to the new, computer-driven technology, styles changed. It was the end of an era and the studios full of bric-a-brac and pinned-up sketches, with their truly bohemian atmosphere, were replaced by screens and machines.

Bob is survived by his wife, Beryl, whom he married in 1947, their daughters Claire and Tessa, and six grandchildren. His daughters Susan and Julia predeceased him.

• Roland Frederick Godfrey, animator and film-maker, born 27 May 1921; died 21 February 2013

BBC radio announcer with a warm and mellifluous delivery

One day in 1981, the Radio 3 voice announced at 8am that she was going to read the news summary. There was a pause. Then she exclaimed, "Good gracious! I had it here a moment ago!" The nation's music lovers' breakfast was momentarily interrupted by this grave crisis. Matters were resolved when the errant bulletin was retrieved from the wastepaper basket into which it had fallen.

This incident befell Patricia Hughes, acclaimed for her impeccable delivery of announcements and who – despite possessing a confident-sounding voice – was petrified of making mistakes such as this one.

Patricia, who has died aged 90, was part of a generation of radio announcers who, broadly speaking, were selected for their voices and personalities rather than specialist knowledge or journalistic skills. Until about 1970, even presenters on news and current affairs programmes – such as Patricia's near-contemporary Jack de Manio on Today – mostly had their scripts written for them. In time, these golden voices were swept away by more demotic ones, but they remained fondly remembered by many.

Born in Malaya, where her father was a senior executive, Patricia went to school in Sussex and then rejoined her parents in Kuala Lumpur. Following the Japanese invasion at Christmas 1941, she and her mother fled to Singapore. After a short spell in South Africa, Patricia came back to Britain on her own and took a secretarial job with the BBC General Overseas Service (GOS).

In due course, she applied for an announcing post and remained with the GOS for about 15 years, also working for the Home Service and for the Third Programme after it was inaugurated in 1946. She moved over to the Light Programme when Jean Metcalfe, one of the few other female announcers at that time, left to have children.

Patricia had a brief wartime marriage to a naval officer, which ended in divorce. In 1958, she married John Ginnett, a solicitor, and took a career break in the early 1960s to have a baby. In 1969, she returned to what had just been renamed Radio 3. Chiefly known for introducing the Monday lunchtime concerts from St John's, Smith Square, she also became noted for poetry and prose readings that she inserted in the nooks and crannies between programmes.

Various attempts have been made to characterise her delivery – of which "dark brown voice" tells only half the story. It was warm, creamy, mellifluous and with a touch of smokiness. Whatever it was, it enthralled listeners. According to BBC rules, she had to retire at the age of 60 in 1983, but there were mutterings that her "cut-glass tones" and "Kensingtonian vowels" – not to mention her lack of a formal musical qualification – had become inappropriate for the BBC as it was then developing.

When, in 1994, I rescued her from retirement to be a reader on my Radio 4 programme Quote … Unquote, she said she had almost "come to accept that my voice has been relegated to the scrapheap". Our listeners made it clear they were not having any of that. When we went on the road, grown men would go weak at the knees at the prospect of meeting her in the flesh. Would it be all right if they gave her some flowers? I would joke that it was a bit like having the Queen on the programme.

I soon discovered that, in herself, Patricia was not at all regal. In fact, whatever she sounded like, I was struck by how in need of reassurance she could be. After seven years, she asked to retire a second time and I could not stand in her way.

In her final years she continued to enjoy playing the piano – she had composed her own pieces long ago – and so her beloved music was with her to the end.

She is survived by her daughter, Emma, and two granddaughters, Polly and Lara.

• Patricia Rosemary Hughes, radio announcer, born 26 January 1923; died 8 February 2013

Singer with the soul and gospel group the Staple Singers

During the second half of the 20th century, the Staple Singers became one of black America's favourite groups. After achieving fame with traditional gospel songs, they were inspired by Martin Luther King to embrace protest music, before moving on to soul with the Stax label of Memphis, Tennessee. The group consisted of Roebuck "Pops" Staples and his children. Of these, the mainstays of the Staple Singers were the youngest, Mavis, and the eldest, Cleotha, who has died aged 78.

Cleotha was born in rural Mississippi. Her father worked at various jobs but found his metier as a musician, learning the guitar from listening to renowned blues players such as Charley Patton and Howlin' Wolf. Roebuck's brother and sister had moved north to Chicago and in 1936 he followed them to the Windy City with his wife Oceola and the two-year-old Cleotha. There the family grew to five children and by the late 1940s, Pops had schooled Cleotha and her siblings in the close harmonies of classic gospel music. Cleotha (also known as Cleo or Cleedi) attended the city's Doolittle school, then the Dunbar trade school, where she learned dressmaking – she would later design and make stage outfits for the Staple Singers.

The family group began to perform at the Mount Zion Baptist church where Roebuck's brother Chester was the pastor and in 1953, the Staple Singers joined Vee Jay, one of Chicago's larger record companies. Here, they achieved national prominence with such records as On My Way to Heaven, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Uncloudy Day, which is believed to have been the first million-selling gospel single.

Pops built the vocal sound around Cleotha's bright soprano and Mavis's rich contralto. "Cleotha was the rock," according to the gospel expert Bill Carpenter. "Her voice was high in a light way, soothing and velvety, so Pops' guitar playing bounced off that." Cleotha always stood next to her father on stage.

They toured throughout the US and sometimes faced blatant racism. On one occasion Cleotha intervened to defuse the situation when Pops reacted aggressively to a white gas station attendant who refused to give him a receipt. Such behaviour was typical of Cleotha, who was sometimes referred to as "granny" because of her mature demeanour. She described herself as "the strong, silent type".

After hearing King preach in Montgomery, Alabama, Pops decided to put King's words into song, stating: "If he can preach this, we can sing it." He went on to write a number of civil rights anthems, including Why (Am I Treated So Bad)?, which was one of King's favourite songs. The Staple Singers were the first African Americans to record a Bob Dylan song (Blowin' in the Wind, in 1963).

Although Pops stoutly maintained that they were still expressing their Christian beliefs in their music, the Staple Singers had drifted away from the gospel music scene. This was underlined in 1968, when, after making folk-gospel albums for Riverside, they signed a contract with Stax, the pre-eminent soul and rhythm and blues company. Over the next decade, they had four top 10 pop hits, including the No 1 records I'll Take You There (1972), and Let's Do It Again (1975) and eight R&B hits. The Staple Singers were also among the stars of the 1971 Soul to Soul concert in Ghana and the charity Wattstax concert, held in Los Angeles in 1972. It was with Stax that Cleotha made one of her few performances as a solo singer, recording a duet with Eddie Floyd.

When Stax got into financial difficulties, Pops took the group to record for Warner Bros, and there were later albums for Epic and Priority. In 1999, the Staple Singers were the first gospel group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they were to disband the next year, following the death of Pops. Soon afterwards, Cleotha was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Cleotha is survived by her brother Pervis and sisters Mavis and Yvonne. Her husband, Edgar Harris, and her sister Cynthia predeceased her.

• Cleotha Staples, singer, born 11 April 1934; died 21 February 2013

The obituary of Reginald Turnill whisked me back in an instant about 65 years; Reg was a reporter with the Press Association covering a US Air Force court martial at Manston aerodrome. I was his telephonist, whose job it was to phone his copy through to the PA office in London. In those days this had to be done using public telephone booths and penny-in-the-slot machines (old pennies, before decimalisation).

When it came to the verdict and sentence, the courtroom door was locked while quite lengthy proceedings went on. Reg prearranged with me that he would leave the press bench and stand by the locked door on the inside and push underneath the door one of two slips of paper – one saying Guilty, the other Not Guilty. When it appeared (Guilty), I grabbed it and ran to the nearest phone box, called the PA, and the result was in the office within a couple of minutes of being delivered in the courtroom. Exciting stuff for a young lad and enterprising reporting for a man who went on to make his mark at the top of his profession.

Singer and guitarist considered an icon of Chicago blues

For blues enthusiasts who care less for the shock of the new than for the comfort of the old, there was no more reassuring figure than Magic Slim, who has died aged 75. When Slim was in the house, it was as if the clock had been turned back to the 60s, or even the 50s; to a time when blues still represented the lives and tastes of blue-collar African Americans. The sluggish beat, the congested vocals, the guitar wielded with the blunt precision of a miner's shovel, the feeling that the musicians had come to the club or the studio still in their work boots: Slim and his band, the Teardrops, preserved that aesthetic through five decades.

Yet his name was made not in Mississippi, where he was born, nor in Chicago, where he played, but in Europe. His first five albums came out on French labels, and subsequently more than a dozen – about half of his life's work – appeared on the Austrian label Wolf. Tours and concert bookings took him to the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Scandinavia and Greece; he also visited Japan, and on several occasions Brazil, where he had great success.

He was born Morris Holt in the small community of Torrance, Mississippi. In his youth he began playing the piano but, after losing the little finger of his right hand in an accident at a cotton gin, switched to the guitar. When his family moved to nearby Grenada, he became friends with a boy six months older, Sam Maghett, who also played the guitar. In the mid-50s, Maghett moved to Chicago and became the magnetic bluesman Magic Sam; Holt followed, played bass for him and was rewarded – being six-and-a-half feet tall and, in those days, slender – with the nickname of Magic Slim. But competition on the Chicago blues scene was fierce, and Slim decided to go back to Mississippi and work on his craft.

He returned a decade later and formed the first lineup of the Teardrops, with his younger brothers Nick, on bass, and Douglas, on drums. They used to play at Florence's, one of the city's best-known blues clubs, when the resident act, Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, were out of town, and in 1972 they took over the engagement.

Slim cut a couple of singles in the late 60s, but his recording career really started in 1976, with a pair of albums recorded at the Chicago club Ma Bea's by the French label MCM. There were further LPs for Black & Blue and Isabel, all recorded in France. In the US, Alligator Records taped four powerful performances in 1978 for their groundbreaking series Living Chicago Blues. Stronger still was the 1982 album Grand Slam, a studio recording (for Rooster Blues, a joint British-American enterprise) with the feel of a live set, deeply committed to the sound of the Muddy Waters band in its heyday.

For some years before, and several afterwards, Slim and the Teardrops, successively featuring the guitarists Junior Pettis and John Primer, played frequently at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska, a city with a substantial blues audience, and five albums were taped there. In time, Slim made his home in Lincoln.

In 1990, he signed with the American blues label Blind Pig, an association that lasted for the rest of his life and produced eight albums and a best-of compilation. He was happiest with the kind of material he had honed over years of club work, and extending the range of his repertoire without distancing him from his roots required the knowledge and discretion of a producer such as Dick Shurman, who moulded Black Tornado (1998) into one of Slim's best albums. It also featured Slim's son Shawn, a guitarist who had recently rejoined the Teardrops. Blue Magic (2002) was produced by the New York blues-rock musician Popa Chubby, while Midnight Blues (2008) featured cameo appearances by James Cotton, Lonnie Brooks, Elvin Bishop and other blues luminaries. Slim's last album, Bad Boy (2012), affirmed his standing as one of the changeless icons of Chicago blues.

Slim received three WC Handy awards for albums he made for Wolf, and subsequently several Blues Music Association awards, including one for blues band of the year in 2003.

He is survived by his wife Ann, their two sons and four stepchildren, and four children from an earlier relationship.

• Magic Slim (Morris Holt), blues musician, born 17 August 1937; died 21 February 2013

Conductor celebrated for his readings of Richard Strauss

Once described as "a sphinx in a tailcoat", the German conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, who has died aged 89, conducted supremely idiomatic performances of Richard Strauss. His personality always melded seamlessly with the music he conducted. Though he enjoyed great veneration, the suave and personable Sawallisch did not cultivate it. "He never made a star of himself," said the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. "He wants to make music … untrammelled." She added: "It's a wonderful sensation. It's as if you're in private."

Sawallisch's restrained physicality, contradicted by the occasional, discreet leap at the end of The Firebird, later gave way to a particularly intense passion. In middle age he had a certain emotional aloofness, yet his readings of Shostakovich and Brahms symphonies in his 70s were described as "suffocating" in their extremity. His Beethoven Pastoral symphony left hardened recording engineers in tears. While his early 1970s recordings of the Schumann symphonies with the Dresden Staatskapelle had long been considered classics, Sawallisch eclipsed even his own standard with the Philadelphia Orchestra's 2003 live recording of the Symphony No 2 – despite such ill health that some feared he would collapse mid-performance.

The spur of this Indian summer was a personal sadness. Sawallisch's change in temperament – which showed itself only in certain repertoire – dated from the death of his wife of 46 years, Mechthild, in 1998. In the months following, the maestro was known to break down during rehearsals of Austro-Germanic repertoire, but he refused to discuss his inner life, aside from saying: "I've never felt such a close relationship with music."

Born in Munich, Sawallisch studied at the city's Wittelsbacher-Gymnasium and the Hochschule für Musik. His training as a pianist was interrupted by the second world war, during which he was a radio operator in the German army stationed in Italy. He was captured and spent time in both American and British PoW camps. After the war, he started as an opera house répétiteur in Augsburg, Bavaria, then graduated to conducting there. He furthered his operatic activities as general music director in Aachen (1953-58), Wiesbaden (1958-60) and Cologne (1960-63).

He had early success with the Berlin Philharmonic and at the Bayreuth festival and was among the youngest to ever conduct those orchestras. However, Sawallisch turned down offers from the Metropolitan Opera and Vienna State Opera early on, claiming he lacked experience. In doing so, he risked alienating two of the industry's great power brokers, Herbert von Karajan (who offered the Vienna invitation) and the Met's Rudolf Bing.

Instead, Sawallisch pursued three careers concurrently. He headed the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (1960-70) as principal conductor, and was music director of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra (1961-73) and artistic director of Geneva's Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (1973-80). He also made regular appearances with Tokyo's NHK Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and the Israel Philharmonic. He crowned his career with his 10 years as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra (1993-2003), succeeding Riccardo Muti in the role.

Sawallisch's primary opera appointment was as music director of the Bavarian State Opera (1971-92), where he conducted 1,156 performances, including virtually every Strauss opera with the curious exception of Salome. Though Sawallisch's pianistic activities were mainly limited to chamber music and lied recitals with artists such as Schwarzkopf, Hermann Prey and Thomas Hampson, he played the entire first act of Die Walküre from the keyboard – nearly note perfect – when a snowstorm prevented Philadelphia Orchestra members from showing up on one occasion during the 1993-94 season.

Sawallisch made hundreds of recordings, his early efforts including concerto outings with the violinist Johanna Martzy that were suppressed because of tempo disagreements. He expressed affection for his recordings of Strauss's Capriccio with Schwarzkopf, Mozart piano concertos with Annie Fischer and his set of Schumann symphonies with the Dresden Staatskapelle.

Though his recording repertoire was mostly standard and conservative, his concert repertoire was full of contemporary music. In his late 70s, he premiered major orchestral pieces by the American composers Aaron Jay Kernis and Jennifer Higdon. His taste could be surprisingly idiosyncratic and he championed obscure Richard Strauss, such as The Happy Workshop.

Although he most wanted to revisit late Schumann works, such as the Requiem and Scenes from Goethe's Faust, the Philadelphia Orchestra's management prevailed upon Sawallisch to consolidate his many years with the Schumann symphonies in new recordings of them. Critics in New York as well as Philadelphia greeted the performances from which they were recorded with deep gratitude. But even as he was months away from his 80th birthday, Sawallisch would have preferred to push into less familiar repertoire: that was music that needed him more, and Sawallisch always put the needs of music first in his priorities.

Made conductor laureate of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2003, he went on to spend many years in retirement in his country house in Grassau, southern Germany. His primary musical outlet was playing the piano, which he did excellently and mostly for himself. For many years, until ill health prevented it, he received Philadelphia Orchestra musicians in his home when the orchestra was touring Europe.

His son Jörg died earlier this year.

• Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor, born 26 August 1923; died 22 February 2013

Television production designer who gave Doctor Who's Daleks their distinctive appearance

The iconic shape of the Daleks – the most enduring villains from the BBC's long-running television science-fiction series Doctor Who – came from the imagination of the designer Raymond Cusick, who has died aged 84. The famous domed silhouette, with three protuberances – eyestalk, sucker arm and gun – and distinctive spherical skirt decorations, has retained its shape even into the current incarnation of the show.

Cusick's involvement with the second Doctor Who adventure, The Daleks, in 1963, came by chance. The original designer was due to be Ridley Scott, but his schedule ended up clashing with the proposed filming dates. Cusick took the job instead, which required him to come up with such creations as a petrified jungle, a gleaming alien city and some robotic-looking creatures. The Dalek was revealed to be not a machine but a protective shell in which a mutant creature – the result of the genetically disastrous consequences of nuclear war – was housed.

According to Cusick, Terry Nation, the Doctor Who writer who created the Daleks, suggested they should make a gliding movement "like the Georgian state dancers", but there was little other visual description in the script. There was a general consensus among the production team that the cliched "man in a suit" look be avoided in favour of something more otherworldly. Cusick demonstrated the creature's style of movement by grabbing a pepperpot and sliding it across the table to the model maker Bill Roberts (whose company Shawcraft built the Daleks). An initial design involved the Dalek operator propelling the machine with a tricycle housed inside it but eventually the actors moved the squat, castor-mounted props along by shuffling their feet.

Over the next two years, Cusick had to contend with a number of Doctor Who adventures that required new sets each week. The Keys of Marinus (1964), for example, featured hideous brains in jars one week, a lethal jungle the next and a snowy vista after that. Cusick felt that the show's low budget was stretched particularly thinly on stories of this kind, but was assisted by the low-resolution television picture, which, he admitted, covered a multitude of sins. Planet of Giants (1964) was a humdrum story made remarkable by Cusick's impressive renderings of an oversized science laboratory, dead insects and a moving giant fly.

Cusick left Doctor Who after the 12‑part epic The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-66), on which he shared the intensive workload with a fellow designer, Barry Newbery, and was occasionally somewhat rueful about his involvement with the show. He recalled appearing on the TV discussion show Late Night Line-Up with Nation and asking him afterwards about potential involvement with the forthcoming Dalek feature films (made in colour by Aaru productions and starring Peter Cushing in 1965 and 1966). Nation was enthusiastic and reassuring about the projects but, Cusick said: "Then I never heard from him again." From these films and many other commercial exploitations of the Daleks, Nation, a freelancer with a canny agent, became a rich man. Cusick, on the other hand, was a BBC staff member, and only after a lengthy and hard-fought battle by his head of department, got a special merit payment that amounted to no more than a few hundred pounds. He was, however, the proud recipient of a gold Blue Peter badge for his work.

Born in Lambeth, central London, Cusick nurtured a desire to be a sculptor and attended evening classes at art school, but his father felt he should pursue a more practical path. He studied science and maths at Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University) but did not enjoy it, then enlisted in the army and served in Palestine. Returning to the UK, he worked in repertory theatre and joined the BBC staff as a design assistant in 1960. Graduating to designer proper in 1962, he was – as was the norm – expected to turn his hand to a variety of programmes with diverse requirements and from different genres.

After Doctor Who, he worked on productions as wide-ranging as The Pallisers (1974), The Duchess of Duke Street (1976-77), Rentaghost (1978), When the Boat Comes In (1981) and Miss Marple (1985-87). A history enthusiast, he most enjoyed productions that required fastidious research. He had a particular interest in the Napoleonic wars and contributed military campaign articles to the journal of the Waterloo Association.

He provided a vast number of photographs and design sketches for J Jeremy Bentham's 1986 book Doctor Who: The Early Years, and contributed to several Doctor Who DVDs. He was largely self-deprecating about his work, highlighting the ad hoc nature of 1960s television production.

After retiring from the BBC in 1988, he ran a small hotel in south London with his wife Phyllis, whom he had married in 1964 ("Monster man marries" said the local paper). She predeceased him. He is survived by two daughters and seven grandchildren.

• Raymond Patrick Cusick, television production designer, born 1928, died 21 February 2013

Highly effective Scottish secretary and European commissioner

Bruce Millan, who has died aged 85, was a quietly effective Labour politician whose career had been largely confined to Scotland prior to his elevation to European commissioner (1989-95). Under the president of the commission, Jacques Delors, Millan was given responsibility for regional policy and cohesion. Much of the subsequent EU commitment to narrowing the gap between rich and poor can be traced to Millan's success in creating an effective framework for a "Europe of the regions".

Familiar from his Scottish background with the problems of declining industrial regions, Millan brought commitment and expertise to the challenge of easing transition for those parts of Europe that were facing similar challenges. His support for coalfield communities is particularly warmly remembered.

In 1996, John Prescott asked Millan to chair a commission on regional policy in England. Though independent of the Labour party, the characteristically thorough and well-argued Millan report became the template for Labour's commitment to a network of regional development authorities, duly created by the incoming government.

The key to Millan's thinking was an awareness that vast sums were spent in the regions, but most of it under centralised control with little coherence. As an unapologetic believer in state intervention, he saw the need for powerful and accountable economic agencies, attuned to the strategic needs of their regions.

Millan was born in Dundee. His father was a shipyard worker who faced unemployment during the depression; his mother worked in the jute mills to keep the family afloat. From an early age, Millan was a member of the Labour League of Youth, focused on a political career. While this informed his lifelong passion for social justice, after attending Harris Academy in Dundee he trained as an accountant. One of his great strengths was an ability to apply a forensic eye to every piece of paper in search of the facts and figures that mattered. Those who saw only the accountant's demeanour risked failing to understand the depth or integrity of his beliefs.

One victim of this error was Roy Jenkins, then the deputy leader of the Labour party, who admitted to taking Millan to be "nice but pedestrian" before being skewered by him at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party in 1971 over future voting intentions on Europe, which eventually led to Jenkins's departure from Labour politics. Jenkins conceded to having learned a lesson about "the danger of taking a patronising view of colleagues".

Aged 23, while working as an accountant with the Scottish Gas Board, Millan contested the Tory seat of West Renfrewshire and in 1955 stood for Glasgow Craigton. Four years later, he won Craigton from the Tories and he remained in the Commons until departing for Brussels in 1988. In the first Harold Wilson government, he was under-secretary of state for defence (RAF) under Denis Healey to whom he retained a lifelong political affinity.

After Labour's victory in 1966, Millan moved to the Scottish Office. He forged a lengthy and loyal association with Willie Ross, the formidable secretary of state for Scotland whom he eventually succeeded in 1976, as part of the changes that followed Wilson's resignation.

Millan was a highly effective secretary of state. He was credited largely with establishing the Scottish Development Agency (which later became Scottish Enterprise) as a powerful, well-funded organisation, tasked with attracting inward investment and replacing the declining industries with new ones. He had an intense commitment to urban regeneration not least in Dundee, the transformation of which began during this period.

He took over the Scottish Office at a time when nationalism appeared to be on the rise and the Labour party was divided over devolution. It was to his regret that this issue rather than Scotland's pressing social and economic needs consumed so much of his time and energy. Indeed, it was a tribute to his priorities that, following the failure of the 1979 referendum to deliver a devolved parliament, Labour secured an excellent result in Scotland, while Margaret Thatcher prevailed in the country as a whole.

Millan soldiered loyally on in opposition and his selection by Neil Kinnock as Labour's nominee for the highly prized commissioner's post in Brussels came as a considerable surprise. The least flamboyant of politicians, Millan was ideally suited to the policy role in which he found himself and built a massive reputation across the EU for his commitment to the detail, as well as the principle, of entrenching regional policy.

He retired to Glasgow and chaired a landmark review of mental health in Scotland as well as other valuable public roles, quietly fulfilled.

Millan is survived by his wife, Gwen, whom he married in 1953, and a son, daughter and two granddaughters.

• Bruce Millan, politician, born 5 October 1927; died 21 February 2013

Dedicated chairman of Granada who championed high-quality popular TV

Sir Denis Forman, who has died aged 95, was a driving force in Granada TV, one of the leaders in the first batch of independent regional commercial television companies, from its beginnings in the mid-1950s through to his lengthy spell as chairman (1974-87). Though scarcely ever named as producer, he was directly responsible for many programmes and ran his favourite series as personal fiefdoms. His greatest achievement in this capacity was The Jewel in the Crown (1984), based upon the Raj Quartet novels by Paul Scott.

Forman threw himself headlong into many other enthusiasms, including atheism, battle drill, Mozart and Scottish country dancing. A large man in every sense, he was affable, eloquent and determined. At Granada's Manchester studios in the early days, the shortest path to lunchtime refreshment was barred by a waist-high wall. Forman would lead the way and, despite having lost a leg at the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944, would vault briskly over it.

Born in Dumfries, Denis was the rebel among the six children of the Rev Adam Forman, who had been ordained in the Anglican church and would end up a Presbyterian minister, but meanwhile was leading the life of a country gentleman as the factor of his wife's family estate in Scotland. The tone of the household was devout: prayers were said daily and church on Sunday was compulsory and interminable.

As he recounted in his memoir Son of Adam (published in 1990 and filmed as My Life So Far in 1999), Forman hated and secretly rejected it all. One morning, when he was 15, the sermon set off a lunch-table discussion on predestination versus free will. His father closed it by ruling that God did offer people a genuine freedom of choice but, being omniscient, always knew what they would choose. Man could never surprise God. "Well, I have a surprise for him," Denis piped up. "I don't believe in him." The ensuing row lasted all day and into the next, and though it eventually petered out, the emotional damage was such that relations between Forman and his parents were never the same.

Years later, Forman made somewhat clumsy amends when he bestowed his father's forename on the hero of a Granada religious drama series, Adam Smith (1972-73), about a radical Church of Scotland minister. But even here, he admitted, the tenor grew so irreligious that in the end the show had to be moved out of the "God slot", as it was called, and into the regular schedules.

Educated at home, then at Loretto school, Edinburgh, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, Forman was 21 when the second world war broke out. Instead of girding up for the exhausting and hard-drinking round of Highland balls that rounded off the Scottish social season, he was commissioned in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and might have spent the whole war in remote northern outposts had it not been for his interest in military training.

He was disheartened by the archaic training the infantry was still being given, based on drills more appropriate to Waterloo than the German blitzkrieg. When he heard of a revolutionary new Battle School at Barnard Castle, in Durham, teaching "battle drill", he agitated to be sent on one of its courses, in order to set up similar training in his own division. The doctrine was the brainchild of a peacetime solicitor and territorial officer, Lionel Wigram. It concentrated on tactics for basic groups of infantry, and sent them over punishing assault courses, under fire from live ammunition, to develop fighting spirit.

Forman became Wigram's disciple, and succeeded him as commandant of the Battle School when Wigram was sent out to the Mediterranean to see how his ideas were working in real warfare. Arriving in the same theatre a few months later, Forman was horrified to find his hero in disgrace. Wigram had duly observed the Sicilian campaign. In his report he had criticised the performance and morale of Eighth Army troops taking part. General Bernard Montgomery was outraged. Forman devoted much of his second slice of autobiography, To Reason Why (1991), to defending Wigram, who was killed in 1944 while leading a troop of Italian partisans.

Forman received his grim wound at Cassino a few weeks later. A smoke canister fired by a supporting gun battery smashed his leg. "Hopping about on crutches," as he put it, he was back on duty towards the end of the war at an officer cadet training unit. There, he met Fred Majdalany, who had been a journalist and theatre publicist. Majdalany had just published The Monastery, a soldier's-eye account of the Battle of Cassino that won critical acclaim. As his demobilisation approached, Majdalany landed himself a job as the film critic of the Daily Mail. Forman had already acquired a practical interest in the cinema – he and Wigram had planned to make instructional films to augment their battle drill courses. Inspired by Majdalany's example, he thought now about making the cinema a career.

After a spell as chief production officer in the Central Office of Information's film division, in 1948 he was appointed director of the British Film Institute, an influential position in the heady postwar years when the UK film industry was booming but had not lost its wartime ties with governmental aims. Forman was a popular director of the BFI for seven years but as that patriotic spirit gave way to strictly commercial considerations, it became plain to him that the job no longer put him in the mill of the film business. It was more like being its industrial chaplain.

One of the BFI governors was Cecil Bernstein who, with his dynamic brother Sidney, owned the Granada chain of cinemas and had been awarded the weekday independent television franchise for the north of England. Forman dropped a word in Cecil's ear, and was immediately offered a position in the new company. Granada TV launched in 1956 and would always display a knack of being high-minded and public-spirited while doing well in the ratings. Forman fitted into this pattern easily, and was soon regarded as the Bernsteins' natural successor.

Until he became joint managing director in 1965, he had no title but masterminded many programmes, including What the Papers Say (1956-2008), World in Action (1963-98) and A Family at War (1970-72). One which he regarded very much as his own was The Verdict Is Yours (1958-63), a series of fictional trials which the actors improvised as they went along, and whose outcome depended on the verdict of a jury drawn from the general public.

When the company's early financial struggles were forgotten, things improved. Forman, who had been made an OBE in 1956, was knighted in 1976. In 1981 he put out a series devoted to another of his enthusiasms, Mozart's piano concertos, the subject of a book he had written in 1971. He was deputy chairman of the Royal Opera House from 1983 to 1991, and in 1994 published The Good Opera Guide (brought out in a new edition last year). The Good Wagner Opera Guide followed in 2000.

After his retirement in 1987, he wrote his memoirs and presented a Channel 4 series, Beyond Belief: Religion on Trial (1992), which challenged all faiths. He remained a staunch unbeliever and was genuinely distressed, he once told me, when Malcolm Muggeridge, who had been a star performer for Granada, embarked on his public conversion to Christianity. "It worried me to see that fine sceptical mind slipping away. I wrote and challenged him to a two-hour debate over dinner at the Cafe Royal, during which I would try to convert him back to sanity. He sent word politely refusing."

Forman's first wife, Helen (nee de Mouilpied), whom he married in 1948, remained a power in the BFI long after his own departure from the organisation. She died in 1987. They had two sons, Charlie and Adam. In 1990 he married Moni, the widow of their friend James Cameron, the celebrated journalist. Moni and his children survive him.

• Denis Forman, television executive, born 13 October 1917; died 24 February 2013

I had long been a fan of Denis Forman's Good Opera Guide, which manages to both venerate and debunk the art form, so when a new edition was published last year I was eager to interview its writer. In truth, Forman probably shouldn't have done the interview. He had been in St Mary's hospital in Paddington, London, for seven weeks and was hating it. Having always prized freedom and industry, he did not appreciate enforced idleness. "I can no longer read or be creative," he said, "and 24 hours is a lot to get through."

Yet even from his hospital bed, with his false leg parked beside him, you felt his energy as he recalled the great days of Granada – Sidney Bernstein had been a second father to him – and inveighed against the feebleness of much of our current ratings-driven TV. He called Downton Abbey a "pathetic little thing", set beside, say, The Jewel in the Crown, which was indeed his jewel in the crown.

He had had a significant hand in the evolution of World in Action, Brideshead Revisited and Coronation Street, though he admitted that originally he had doubted whether those broad Lancashire accents would ever be accepted down south. He also stressed Granada's role in bringing politics closer to the public: making interviews with politicians less deferential; covering byelections; pioneering broadcasts from the Trades Union Congress. "How many people we've bored since then as a result I don't know," he said.

Forman was one of the last of that wartime generation which saw no contradiction between "pop" and "posh", Coronation Street and Covent Garden. All that mattered was whether it was any good. "We had a determination to democratise television," he said, "so that the viewer could share the political processes; a determination to make television funny, interesting and relevant, World in Action being the best example; and a determination to create great television drama; and we succeeded a bit in all of them."

When I was growing up, my family lived a couple of hundred yards from Bob Godfrey and his family. His daughter Julia was a year younger than me at Brooklands primary school in Blackheath, south-east London.

When you are a nine-year-old boy, you are unaware of the particular skills and abilities of your schoolfriends' fathers, but we all knew that Mr Godfrey owned a 1920s primrose-yellow Rolls-Royce. In those days, people still "ran the engine" weekly if they were not driving the car regularly. This kind and laidback man allowed me not only to sit in his Rolls-Royce, but moreover let me rev the engine, both with the foot accelerator and the hand throttle of the only Rolls in which I have ever been sat. With four daughters in the family, the Roller was eventually exchanged for a VW camper van.

All the kids from our estate were used in filming and I shall never forget a 20-strong wild bunch of us being marshalled and instructed to run at and past the camera – and later seeing the footage appearing on the TV. Bob Godfrey was a man of generous spirit with a superb ability to connect with youngsters.

His photographs of art and craft objects went beyond documentation

David Cripps, who has died aged 74, was the leading British photographer of objects of his generation. His work helped to launch the careers of countless artists and makers. David had a supreme gift for showing his subjects – from ceramics to studio glass and jewellery – with a new clarity and candour, bringing out form, colour and texture through his crisp use of light and shadow, and setting his subjects in a studied space that gave context and breadth. His photography went beyond documentation, adding a new dimension to the objects on which he set his camera.

Much of his observational skill came from his graphic training, a visual sense that was nurtured early. He was born in Fulham, south-west London, into a family of modest means. His mother had been in service (the poet John Masefield was among her employers) and his father was a gas fitter. Though he was often ill as a child, his parents recognised an ability that gained him a place at the Sir Christopher Wren school in Notting Hill, west London. The school was linked to Hammersmith School of Art, and much of the curriculum was devoted to art and architecture, giving David a portfolio sufficient to take him to the London College of Printing in the mid-1950s. He went on to work in Chelsea as a graphic artist for Hans Schleger, the German-born designer famous for his London Transport circle and bar symbol for bus stops and pioneering work on corporate identity. This was a heady time, with David very much part of the swinging London art scene.

Following a period in an advertising agency, David got a job at the new Observer colour supplement, assisting the art director. It was here that his photographs were first seen, initially fashion shots and then still lifes for the cover. This made him an obvious choice for the memorable still-life sequence that accompanied Raymond Hawkey's titles for Richard Attenborough's film Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), for which Hawkey and David received great acclaim.

After a period of personal difficulties, David resurfaced at the time Crafts magazine was launching in 1973. By chance he met its art director John Hawkins who employed David to photograph craft objects for its features, and the characteristic simplicity of David's style became an integral part of the publication, and the modern crafts imagery of the 70s and 80s. In 1975 Bruce Bernard, the discerning picture editor of the Sunday Times magazine, spotted David's photographs and employed him immediately. As Bernard would later write, David's work "showed a much more particular appreciation of each individual object than I had ever seen before ... He uses light to illuminate not blind ... and sees every subject as an entirely separate problem ... But his unique respect for the subjects does not rob his pictures of their graphic strength."

As well as extensive work for the Crafts Council (which gave him a retrospective in 1979) and Design magazine, Cripps contributed to many books in the late 70s and 80s. These included numerous monographs and catalogues on artists and makers such as Charles Sargeant Jagger, Lucie Rie, Elizabeth Fritsch, Alison Britton and, more recently, Ewen Henderson, Carol McNicoll and Michael Rowe, many of whom became valued friends. There were his contributions to major surveys such as Wealth of the Roman World for the British Museum (1977), Dada and Surrealism Reviewed for the Hayward Gallery (1978), British Craft Textiles (1985) and Quilts of the British Isles (1987). Books for the popular market included charming studies with Mary Stewart-Wilson of Queen Mary's dolls' house (1988) and the Royal Mews (1991), each project cherished for how it might broaden his perception and technique. He was a fine portraitist, and his personal work included superb landscape, still-life and flower studies, many of which were exhibited in solo shows in London and Birmingham in the mid-1990s.

While David was involved in several recent projects, including recording much of the great ethnographic collection at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London, and work on Royal Mail commemorative stamps, he was semi-retired by 1998, the year he moved from north London to Ramsgate. Though distant from his favourite Soho drinking haunts, he relished his new Kent friends, and a large house to renovate. And while not the world's best businessman – bills were things you never opened – he brought his sensibility to stylish dressing, good cooking and a lasting interest in art.

A perfectionist, his asides on substandard work were pithy and wonderfully blunt. But he was one of the warmest people I have known, and it was this modesty and empathy that he brought to the camera, a lasting contribution for which he was made an MBE. As Bernard wrote: "Through his dedication to the work of the artist craftsman he has himself became a true artist and craftsman of the camera."

He is survived by his partner, the knitter Annie Fewlass, and his son Aaron, by his marriage to Janice Wainwright.

• David Cripps, photographer, born 30 April 1938; died 20 January 2013

My former colleague Howard Meltzer, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 61, was an outstanding social researcher in the field of disability, in particular the design, implementation and analysis of national health surveys. In 1979 he was appointed principal social survey officer at the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), which later became the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Howard came to my attention when he masterminded the national survey of disability in the late 1980s, carried out by the systematic interviewing of a large random sample of adults living at home, using questions to assess disability and its impact on daily living. At that time I was the principal medical officer at the Department of Health's mental health division and was in the process of planning the first British national psychiatric morbidity survey, which was designed to find out how common different types of mental disorder are in Britain and assess their associated risk factors and consequences. I used Howard's expertise for the sampling design of the survey, beginning a collaboration of more than two decades, working together with leading psychiatric epidemiologists, producing a major series of national surveys.

Thanks to Howard's survey design skills, Britain now has a unique mental health survey programme which no other country has surpassed. The surveys have improved our understanding of the prevalence and risk of different illnesses, and have been used to inform national policy. The standards he set for survey design have had a major international influence.

Howard was born in Manchester, the younger son of a wood-cutting machinist, Morris, and his wife, Bessie. He was educated at North Manchester grammar school and did a BSc in psychology at North East London Polytechnic (now the University of East London), a master's in sociology at London School of Economics and a PhD at Hull University.

Twenty-five years after being made the principal social survey officer at the OPCS, he was promoted to deputy divisional director of the ONS's health and care division. In 2006 he left the civil service and took up a chair as professor of mental health disability in the department of health sciences, at the University of Leicester.

His work was recognised around the world and he advised the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and EC committees on disability issues. He loved cricket, books, word games and the daily Guardian crossword.

He is survived by his wife, Sylvie, whom he married in 1998, two stepdaughters, Sophie and Claire, and his brother, Edwin.

Architectural photographer who captured the essence of urban landscapes

The Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico, who has died of cancer aged 68, was arguably the best internationally known photographer of urban landscapes. From his early work documenting the coastline of France and the ruins of Beirut following the civil war of the 1980s, through to portraits of Shanghai, Istanbul, Moscow and Rio de Janeiro, and images of former industrial powerhouses now decayed and abandoned, his domain was the relentless decay of the old and the burgeoning new megalopolis.

Born in Milan, Basilico trained as an architect and graduated from Milan Polytechnic in 1973. Architecture informed his work throughout his life but with the recent exception of a book on (and sponsored by) Scavolini kitchens, the interior world did not feature any more than the residents of the apartment blocks and factories he documented. On the rare occasions when people did figure in his photographs, it was not to inhabit, still less to belong there, but to exaggerate the monumental scale of the apparently empty buildings.

According to the photographer and writer Italo Zannier, Basilico's place in 20th-century Italian photography was assured by his style of "1930s sophistication", his "controlled and knowing metaphysical tension" and his achievement in "combining a postmodernist taste for peripheral architecture with an archaeological approach … documented in an intense chiaroscuro". Although Basilico latterly explored colour and digital photography, his lifelong passion was for often ominous shades of black and white and the use of classic cameras, particularly his large-format Rolleiflex. At times, he would employ a still older tripod and black cloth technique.

Italy inspired his portfolio throughout his life. His first major exhibition, held in Milan, presented factory portraits – not of the workers but of the buildings. It represented three years of work undertaken between 1978 and 1980. He then undertook a project documenting modernist architecture in Milan, seeking to give the impression in the photographs that time had been suspended. This was achieved, he explained, through lighting and the absence of traffic.

Commissioned by the French government's Mission Photographique for the Bord de Mer project, he created a study principally of Norman seascapes exploring the point where land and sea merge, almost without a border, in a bleak diffusion he called apocalyptic. During the second half of the 1980s, he explored Europe through its cities (Trieste, Antwerp, Geneva, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Vigo), his eye always more on the margins than the centre.

Basilico's fascination with harbours and the liminal edge of things led to a book and exhibition of seaports in 1982, and a book of collected projects, Porti di Mare, in 1990. He exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles festival (1987) in Provence, the Philippe Daverio gallery in New York (1987) and Mois de la Photo in Paris (1990), and undertook work for the Milanese Progetto Beni Architettonici e Ambientali (Project for the Architectural and Environmental Heritage of Milan).

In 1990 Basilico went to Berlin to document the aftermath of the fall of the wall: the largely untouched, decaying grand avenues of the eastern zone were perfectly suited to his eye for the relics of abandon. In 1991, he accepted a commission to document Beirut in the wake of the 15-year-long Lebanese civil war. The bleak formality of the bullet-riddled, empty arcades was captured only with available light. Basilico's sense of scale and absence was unique in this group project, sponsored by the foundation belonging to Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister assassinated in 2005, and including work by Josef Koudelka, René Burri, Raymond Depardon, Robert Frank and Fouad Elkoury.

Basilico, who later returned to Beirut, wrote on his first visit: "There were almost no street lamps and buildings looked like ghosts. The only noise was that of electricity generators. Space was perceptible but not matter. The atmosphere was heavy and intriguing." He later concluded: "It seemed to me some people had just left and others were about to return. All in all, the situation seemed almost normal – the city had just entered a long period of waiting."

For the next 20 years, Basilico's publications and exhibitions gathered pace, as he zigzagged between familiar places and obsessions. He continued to focus on European cities as industrial centres; times of violence and dislocation; and themes of collapse and decay. Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco and Kwangju joined the panorama, alongside Oporto, Marseille and Bolzano. There were also occasional shifts of scale to studies of benches and bollards, girders and staircases, worthy of Eugène Atget.

At the Venice Biennale in 1996, he received the Osella d'Oro award, a most prestigious trophy to add to the rest. He continued to work up until his death: during his career there were more than 100 group and 50 solo exhibitions, with a major retrospective at the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, in Turin, in 2001. The scholar and curator Francesco Bonami said that, in his urban landscapes, Basilico was "like a doctor examining a patient who has survived a deadly disease. He observed destruction and at the same time acknowledged the incredible possibilities offered by survival."

• Gabriele Basilico, photographer, born 12 August 1944; died 13 February 2013

Nicholas Kenyon writes: Denis Forman always retained his extraordinary intellectual curiosity and his intense musical enthusiasms, which were what brought us together. He always looked for new horizons. Each year, he would travel with Moni to stay in their beloved Goa for several months, and would take with him a single body of music to explore thoroughly – for example, all the Haydn symphonies. As he was looking for another collection of great work, I recommended the Bach cantatas. He listened to all the 200-plus works and made copious, fascinating notes. He wrote: "I am stunned by the Bach cantatas. It promises to be the most rewarding holiday task of the last decade. How could I go through this world for 94 years without knowing them?" He was curious, and generous, to the end.

Geoffrey Goodman writes: My friend Denis Forman had a towering influence – notably, of course, in his magnificent work with the Bernsteins in guiding Granada TV into what became Britain's outstanding channel for television journalism. He was also a pioneering supporter when we launched British Journalism Review, of which I was founding editor, in 1989.

Linda McDougall writes: A raging feminist and rough-edged Kiwi, I went to World in Action as a producer in 1974. Denis Forman was the loveliest man I ever met and the best boss I ever had. He was caring and gracious, he treated everyone exactly the same, and he was keen to be involved in everything we did. He always worked with his office door wide open and anyone could call in to ask his advice or share a story.

Renowned Czech cellist whose dream of carrying on the work of the Bohemian Quartet was realised by the Smetana group

Few musicians have realised their dreams as comprehensively as the great Czech cellist Antonín Kohout, who has died aged 93. He was the guiding spirit of the Smetana Quartet from its debut in 1945 to its dissolution in 1989; and as a teacher he nurtured such groups as the Panocha, Talich, Prazak, Kocian and Wihan Quartets, to whom he acted as an artistic counsellor just as he himself was helped by musicians of an earlier era. The Smetana Quartet gave countless performances all over the world – thousands of Smetana's First Quartet in E minor, From My Life, alone – and its recording career covered 40 years, from 78rpm sets through mono, stereo and quadraphonic LPs to compact discs. In 1972, before the advent of the CD, it made the very first classical recordings to employ digital technology, rather than the analogue method used until then for vinyl discs. The resulting LP of two Mozart quartets was released by the Japanese label Denon.

Born at Lubné, north-west of Brno in southern Moravia, Kohout studied with Karel Pravoslav Sadlo and could have had a solo career, but yearned for an ensemble to carry on the work of the great Bohemian Quartet from the earlier part of the century. In 1941, he met the violinist Vaclav Neumann in a student chamber orchestra at the Prague Conservatory. "Neumann invited me to join his amateur quartet," Kohout recalled. "I liked his ideas and we were both fond of Janacek." Much chopping and changing took place, under the eye of coach Josef Micka, before Jaroslav Rybensky, Lubomir Kostecky, Neumann and Kohout appeared for the first time as the Smetana Quartet at Prague Municipal Library on 6 November 1945.

"We wanted to be a Czech quartet," said Kohout. "Our ideal was the Czech character of Smetana's music." They began with his Second Quartet in D minor; then came Vitezslav Novak's Second; and, after the interval, Smetana's E minor.

In 1947, Neumann finally opted for conducting – he later headed the Czech Philharmonic – so Rybensky switched to viola and the brilliant Jiri Novak came in as leader. In 1949, by then affiliated to the Philharmonic, the Smetanas were inspired by the examples of the Kolisch Quartet, whom Kohout had heard before the war, when they were based in Vienna, and the Quartetto Italiano to learn their music by heart.

A new intensity and profundity in their playing compensated for the inevitable narrowing of their repertoire. Performing without printed parts lifted them on to an exalted plane: with no music stands in the way, they could sit closer together; and the memorising process helped them to get inside the music. In 1950, they visited Poland; and as the cultural thaw in the cold war began, they often acted as ambassadors. "We were known as the advance guard of the Czech Philharmonic," said Kohout. They first travelled to Britain in 1955.

When Rybensky quit at the end of that year, his successor was an inspired choice, the violinist and musicologist Milan Skampa, a Janacek expert.

Within months, Skampa mastered the viola and its clef, committing a dozen quartets to memory, and in the spring of 1956 the Smetana Quartet re-emerged better than ever.

The four now gave increasing attention to interpretation, striving to find the right style and sound for each work. Touring was arduous and they had to bring home hard currency, most of which was commandeered by the state management organisation, Pragokoncert. When outside Czechoslovakia, they were not paid their salaries. They gave up touring the US after 1969 but loved Japan and went almost every year to Britain, where they were much appreciated by audiences and the BBC. In 1973, they formed a string quintet with Josef Suk as first viola; and in 1974 they reverted to printed parts for most repertoire, playing only their Czech warhorses – Smetana, Dvorak, Janacek – from memory.

Each summer, at their country houses in Northern Bohemia, the Smetanas learned at least one new Czech work. They were prime movers in bringing Janacek's two quartets and Smetana's Second into the mainstream; and they were the first Czechs to win as much fame for the Viennese classics as for their native repertoire.

Kohout, whose musical personality combined an almost peasant earthiness with the highest artistic ideals, taught at the Prague Academy of Musical Arts from 1967; but his influence spread much further. He reduced his activities in the mid-1990s and gave up teaching after his wife Marie died in 1998 – they had been childhood sweethearts. His elder daughter also predeceased him. He is survived by a son, a daughter and five grandchildren.

• Antonín Kohout, cellist, born 12 December 1919; died 15 February 2013

Soviet and Russian film director whose reputation is based on only four films, all of them masterpieces

Aleksei German, who has died of heart failure aged 74, was among the very last in a generation of film directors victimised by the Soviet Union's draconian attitude to the arts. As a result, since 1968 German had made only six films, one of them co-directed and one uncompleted at his death. Three of them were shelved for several years, and Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998), seven years in the making, was repeatedly bailed out by French money. German's reputation is based on only four films, all of them masterpieces.

Gradually, after the fall of communism in Russia, German's films were screened at cinematheques and festivals in the west. Khrustalyov, My Car!, the only one of his works that was not banned, provoked a mass walkout by critics at the 1998 Cannes film festival. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 150-minute film was "incomprehensible for long stretches and unforgivably unfunny in the endless scenes of manic visual satire". Martin Scorsese, who was president of the Cannes jury, remarked that German's film obviously deserved the Palme d'Or, but he wasn't able to convince his fellow jurors because he didn't really understand it. Since then, many critics, initially confused by the opaque narrative and overwhelmed by its black humour and nightmarish vision of Russia during the last days of Stalin, have acclaimed the film.

Despite his films having had limited distribution, German is now considered by many the equal of the better-known Andrei Tarkovsky. My Friend Ivan Lapshin, which German completed in 1982, was released in Russia in 1986 thanks to glasnost. It was subsequently voted the best Soviet film ever made in a national poll of film critics.

German was born in Leningrad of Jewish parentage, the son of the novelist and scriptwriter Yuri German, whose novel My Friend Ivan Lapshin was used as the basis of the younger German's most successful film, and whose story Operation Happy New Year inspired his son's first solo film effort, Trial on the Road (1971). Aleksei graduated as a theatre director in 1962 from what became the Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, before following his father into film by studying with Grigori Kozintsev, for whom Yuri had written screenplays. Aleksei then joined Lenfilm studio as an assistant director.

He made his film-directing debut with The Seventh Companion (1968), set immediately after the revolution. The fact that German later disowned it – mainly because of disagreements with his co-director, Grigori Aronov, a loyal Soviet – does not diminish its interest. Like all his work, the film focuses on an outsider, caught between opposing ideologies. In this case, it is a former tsarist general, released from prison into the utopian society of the Soviet Union, where he is told: "The fact that you are alive is a misunderstanding."

German's first solo effort was Trial on the Road, in which a German soldier is captured by Russian partisans but reveals he is a former Red Army sergeant who was forced to serve the Nazis. He is taken into the fighting unit, where he is treated with suspicion and vindictiveness until he distinguishes himself by bravery. This assured, anti-war film, in dazzling monochrome, effectively evoking the atmosphere of the Breugelesque landscape, and playing ironically with notions of heroism, was released during perestroika after being banned for 15 years for "anti-heroic" depiction of Soviet history.

Also banned for some years, for similar reasons, was German's second film, Twenty Days Without War (1976), a restrained examination into the nature of truth, in which a novelist and war correspondent, Major Lopatin (Yuri Nikulin, the comic actor and circus performer, cast against type), has 20 days leave after the Battle of Stalingrad to visit his home town in Tashkent, where a "positive" war film, based on his army memoirs, is being made. Beginning with a tour-de-force 10-minute take on a train, the film displays German's eye for detail as Lopatin soon discovers that people's perceptions of the "great patriotic war" are very different from what he has experienced, making him realise that those who stayed at home need romantic and heroic illusions. "We can't have a film without a heroic act," he is told by the producer of the film-within-the-film.

Set in the winter of 1935, My Friend Ivan Lapshin follows the eponymous police chief in a provincial Russian town, whose main activity is to track down a notorious gang of criminals, though he finds time to make clumsy attempts at romance. The film opens in the present (in colour) and reverts to the past (in black and white) via an unseen narrator – as usual in German's work, atmosphere and character are more important than plot. A densely packed and richly detailed tapestry of life and conditions in the period just prior to the Stalin purges, it is made with a Chekhovian sensibility and a naturalistic style.

Nothing could have prepared audiences for Khrustalyov, My Car!, the style of which combines the baroque of Orson Welles, the phantasmagoria of Federico Fellini and the rigour of Béla Tarr, but which is unmistakably German's own. Adapted loosely from a story by Joseph Brodsky, it takes place over three days during the winter of 1953 (it always seems to be winter in German's Russia), as Stalin lies dying. The elusive narrative follows a military brain surgeon, General Klenski, released from a gulag, who is taken to Stalin's deathbed. On the way, he is brutally abused by a group of convicts. With vibrant use of handheld camera and long takes at significant moments, Khrustalyov, My Car!, is like an x-ray of the collective unconscious of the Russian brain at the time. 

For more than 10 years, German had been struggling to complete History of the Arkanar Massacre, based on the 1964 science-fiction novel Hard to Be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Set on another planet, it is an allegory about the Stalin era that might also be applied, to a certain extent, to Putin's Russia. It was finally nearing completion when German died. According to his son, Aleksei, a superb film-maker in his own right, there remains only some re-recording of sound and editing to be resolved.

German is survived by his wife, the screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita, who co-wrote Khrustalyov, My Car!, and his son.

• Aleksei Yuryevich German, film director, born 20 July 1938; died 21 February 2013