Clive Lythgoe was a leading British classical pianist of the 1950s and 1960s, popular in the UK and the United States, where he was considered to be "Britain's answer to Liberace".
13 Facts About Clive Lythgoe
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Clive Lythgoe was born in Colchester, Essex, on 9 April 1927, the son of a Royal Army Medical Corps sergeant major.
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Clive Lythgoe grew up at Wimbledon, where he sang in the church choir, and disappointed his parents by shunning a career in law or accountancy.
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Clive Lythgoe consolidated his reputation when he performed the premiere of Malcolm Williamson's piano concerto at the 1958 Cheltenham Music Festival.
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Clive Lythgoe appeared as a soloist with all the leading British orchestras, under conductors including Sir Colin Davis and Zubin Mehta.
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Clive Lythgoe owned a six-bedroom house in Surrey, a hand-built Bristol 405 sports car, but became increasingly depressive.
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In 1976, five hours of back-to-back recitals in New York almost finished him off, and when Herbert von Karajan offered an engagement playing Brahms' second piano concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, Clive Lythgoe astonished both the conductor and himself by declining.
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Clive Lythgoe recalled that he felt he had reached a "musical menopause".
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Clive Lythgoe increasingly felt his true mission was to bring music to those not privileged enough to attend concert halls.
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Clive Lythgoe was the director of the Roosa School of Music, a community music school located on Willow Place in Brooklyn Heights for several years, after which it was merged into another school.
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Clive Lythgoe lived alone in a simple one-bedroom co-op apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens.
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Clive Lythgoe's acclaimed recordings of American piano music were added to the permanent collection of the White House Library by President Jimmy Carter.
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In England, his TV series, The Clive Lythgoe Touch, ran for 85 weeks, consecutively followed by a 52-week BBC radio series, My Piano and I, and a 26-week television series for London's ITN.