First studies and arrival in Europe

Geoffrey Douglas Madge was born in Adelaide (Australia), having his first piano lessons at the age of eight. Later after hearing the great pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch he continued his piano studies with Clemens Leski at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide. During this period he was busy composing string quartets, songs and works for piano solo. At an early stage he developed an interest in unjustifiably neglected composers and this became one of his main enterprises. He toured Australia for 3 years with a piano trio. Then, in 1963, after winning first prize in the ABC piano competition in Sydney, he went to Europe to study with Eduardo del Pueyo in Brussels and Geza Anda in Luzern. Following this he gave successful debut concerts in London, Cologne, Budapest and Amsterdam. He settled in Holland upon his appointment as professor of piano at the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague, he is now retired.

Recital programs

Geoffrey Madges recital programmes are a combination of baroque, classical, 19th century and contemporary works, often a combination of well-known and unknown compositions. Also special projects like his Cathedrals of Sound; series (first arranged for the 1996 Adelaide Festival) in which he performs epoch-making works in 3 or 4 recitals from the whole piano literature,including the monumental Berlioz/Liszt Symfonie Fantastique. During the last years some of the main works he has been performing are Bach's Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue and the complete Well-tempered Clavier. Performances of such major works as Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and Hammerklavier Sonata, Reger's Bach Variations and the Debussy Etudes have always been a highlight in his concert programmes. He has always been fascinated by the connections between architecture and music.

Concerto repertoire and other interests

He has given and still gives performances of an extremely wide range of piano concertos, all the Bachs, the 5 Beethovens, including the Choral Fantasia, Mozart's Piano Concert in C KV415, Brahms 2nd, the Max Reger Piano Concerto, the Busoni and Benjamin Britten concertos, Liszt's no's 1 and 2, all three Medtner concertos and many others. During the 60's he was investigating the music of the Russian composers around the revolution years and following much research in libraries and archives brought a number of forgotten works from Mossolov (including the piano concerto), Lourié, Roslavetz, Wyschnegradsky and others to the attention of the public.

Xenakis and Sorabji

Following his arrival in Europe he was quickly discovered by Iannis Xenakis and other well known composers of complex works. Madge's first meeting with the celebrated composer Xenakis was in 1970 in London, prior to his performance of Herma, a part of his debut concert programme at Wigmore Hall in which he also played the Diabelli variations of Beethoven together with the complete Etudes by Debussy. Following this meeting many Xenakis performances followed under the supervision of the composer: his complete piano solo works, ensemble works and both concertos. One of the highlights in Geoffrey Madge's cooperation with Xenakis was his very successful contribution to the Xenakis Festival in 1975 in Athens with Herma, Evryali and Synaphai. In that year the new Greek government, replacing the facist regime of the colonels, decided to celebrate the new freedom by honouring Iannis Xenakis with an all-Xenakis Festival in the Herodus Atticus Theatre. In 1975 Decca recorded for LP the first piano concerto Synaphai Connexities for piano and orchestra with the New Philharmonia Orchestra under Elgar Howarth and Geoffrey Madge as soloist; this LP won an Edison award and has recently been re-released on CD by Decca. He has given many performances of this and other Xenakis works with the conductors Michel Tabachnik, David Porcelijn, Cristobal Halfter and Elgar Howarth.

Geoffrey Madge became widely well known through his integral performances of the Opus Clavicembalisticum by K. Sorabji. He was given personal written permission from the composer to perform the work following a number of meetings with the composer. Since the first complete performance in the Holland Festival (Utrecht) on 11/06/82 more performances of the complete, almost 4 hours duration work have followed in Chicago, Bonn, Montreal, Paris and in Berlin (Berliner Festspiele). The release of the 5 CD production Chicago performance, recorded by WFMT-FM in Chicago and produced by BIS, has received high critical acclaim.

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