John Ogdon was a pianistic prodigy with a formidable technique and an astonishing memory who won the Liszt Prize in 1961 and the Tchaikovsky Prize in 1962.

With a voracious appetite for difficult music of all kinds, Ogdon was at home in repertoire which few others touched, such as the concertos by Busoni, Tippett and Schoenberg and works by Alkan, Alun Hoddinott and Harrison Birtwistle. He is probably the only pianist to have tackled Kaikhosru Sorabji's notorious Opus Clavicembalisticum, which lasts four hours. He was also a composer in his own right.

Increasingly obese, with heavy glasses and trademark pharaonic beard, he shambled bearlike on stage and hunched over the keys.

From the early Seventies he suffered from manic-depression and once attempted suicide. His playing became erratic. His wife, Brenda Lucas, also a concert pianist, described their turbulent relationship in a book, Virtuoso, later adapted for television. He died in 1969 aged 52.

-Roger Moodiman, Marine Parade, Brighton