The pianist Brenda Lucas Ogdon, who has died aged 90, achieved greatest prominence in the duo with her husband John Ogdon, one of the most dazzling performers of his day. It was at the suggestion of the conductor John Minchinton that they started playing as a duo, and in 1962 Lord Harewood invited them to perform Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion at the Edinburgh international festival. It proved to be a notable success, and in the following year’s festival they gave it again.

John’s joint victory at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1962, sharing first place with Vladimir Ashkenazy, led to international tours. In Australia in 1964 the couple had separate performing schedules as well as playing as a duo, and Brenda cared for their infant daughter, Annabel. Later tours included several to the US, where on one occasion they performed Mozart’s Concerto for Three Pianos in Houston with the conductor, André Previn, at the third keyboard, and to the Soviet Union.

In 1968 they gave the premiere of the Concerto for Two Pianos by Alan Rawsthorne and Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Solo Pianos at the Proms, and their recording of the Bartók Sonata was released. They also gave the work in the second of their two Proms appearances (1969). Other celebrated recordings included Rachmaninov’s two Suites for Two Pianos (1975) and Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen (1971).

John’s struggles with mental illness, as well as Brenda’s in coping while raising a family, were documented in the book Virtuoso (1981), which she co-wrote with Michael Kerr. It was revised just before her husband’s death at the age of 52 from pneumonia, exacerbated by undiagnosed diabetes, in 1989. In the BBC Screen Two docudrama of the same year adapted from the book, the couple were played by Alison Steadman and Alfred Molina.

“John, impossible, adorable John, has dominated every aspect of my adult life,” Brenda wrote in Virtuoso. When I interviewed her four years ago for the booklet notes for A Life in Music, a double-CD reissue of her recordings with John or of his compositions, she recalled being nominated for a Women of the Year award on the strength of the book, and disconcerted at being designated “Brenda Lucas, author” on the place marker for the lunch. Of her recordings of John’s music, those of the two sets of Preludes and the Fourth Sonata are particularly fine and demonstrate a deep understanding of her husband’s creative persona.

Brenda had had a promising solo career prior to her marriage to John in 1960, and in the years immediately following. She had been inspired initially by the example of the “larger-than-life and very glamorous” Australian pianist Eileen Joyce. She made her first appearance with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 21, going on to give solo recitals for the BBC from their Manchester studio as well as a critically well-received recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, in 1962.

Born in Hyde, Cheshire (now in Greater Manchester), Brenda was the elder daughter of Martha (nee Ratcliffe), headteacher of the infant school where Brenda started her education, and Jack Lucas, who worked for the then National Assistance Board. While theirs was not a particularly musical house, her father was a keen ballroom dancer and her mother could play the piano “a little”.

When Brenda was seven her parents acquired an upright piano and almost immediately Brenda started picking out tunes by ear. A local music teacher, Mrs Round, taught her the basics, until at 11 Brenda moved on to the convent-run Harrytown high school in Bredbury, Stockport, where her musical talents were encouraged by Sister Mary Angela. At 13, Brenda scored the highest mark of anyone in the entire country at Grade VII and was awarded the Associated Board’s gold medal.

Offers of scholarships at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London proving impractical when she was 14, Brenda finally went to the then Royal Manchester College of Music (now the Royal Northern) in 1952, where she studied with Iso Elinson. She gained a reputation as an accompanist for wind and string players, including the violinist Martin Milner, later leader of the Hallé Orchestra. In 1956-57, she attended summer school courses at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria.

It was at the RMCM that she met John – fellow students there also included the composers Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. She graduated with honours in 1957, and the couple moved to London, where in the early 1960s she had lessons with Ilona Kabos.

After the birth of their second child, Richard, Brenda put her performing career on hold to care for her children and husband; John became increasingly ill and intermittently violent through the 70s. Although he resumed performing a decade later, until his death, Brenda – who toured again with him in the Soviet Union in 1985 – found it harder to pick up the pieces of her own career.

However, she toured again to the US and, in 1996, Hong Kong, and made fine recordings in later years of music by Bach, and Debussy and Ravel. In 1993, she established the John Ogdon Foundation, dedicated to preserving his legacy, and became a noted teacher.

She is survived by Annabel, Richard, and four grandchildren.

• Brenda Lucas Ogdon, pianist and author, born 23 November 1935; died 13 December 2025