The pianist Anthony Goldstone, who has died aged 72, was a regular broadcaster and prolific recording artist, making more than 80 CDs in a wide-ranging repertoire. His interests included British music, the classics and lesser-known works by composers such as Saint-Saëns, Heinrich von Herzogenberg and Ernő Dohnányi – byways he explored with relish and conscientiousness.

He also delighted in excavating unpublished or unfinished pieces which he would complete himself and record. A disc of Mozart, for example, featured a number of works left unfinished at the composer’s death – including a D minor Fantasy and a Präludium in C – fragments which were reconstructed and completed with skill and sensitivity.

With his wife, Caroline Clemmow, he brought a similarly industrious approach to the piano duet repertoire. They formed their duo in 1984, married in 1989 and in concerts that took them all over the world played The Planets in Holst’s original two-piano version, works by Britten, the six double concertos of Antonio Soler and much more. Many of these works were also recorded, and a particular landmark was a complete cycle of Schubert’s four-hand music, issued by Olympia in 1999.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow performing Alexander Moyzes’ Jazz Sonata for Two Pianos

Notwithstanding their familiarity with the recording studio – they would habitually release two or three CDs a year – Goldstone and Clemmow also brought a popular touch to their concerts, offering informal spoken introductions to the music. Goldstone was also the director and pianist of the Musicians of the Royal Exchange, which he founded in 1978.

Born in Liverpool, he was raised in Manchester, the older son of Rose (nee Kessly) and Charles Goldstone, who worked in the garment and textile trade. He won a scholarship to Cambridge from Manchester grammar school, but chose to study instead at the Royal Manchester (now Royal Northern) College of Music (RMCM), primarily with Derrick Wyndham. He later studied in London with Maria Curcio, herself a pupil of Artur Schnabel, making him a sixth-generation pupil of Beethoven – a fact of which he was proud.

He made his debut in Manchester in 1965 with the RMCM orchestra under John Barbirolli and went on to win prizes at international piano competitions in Munich and Vienna before making his London debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1969. In 1973 he was a made a fellow of the RMCM. His appearances with leading orchestras both at home and abroad included four at the BBC Proms: in the Schumann Piano Concerto in 1971, the Beethoven Triple Concerto in 1973, the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto in 1981 and most prominently at the Last Night of the Proms in 1976 when he played Britten’s Diversions, drawing from the composer the appreciative comment: “Thank you most sincerely for that brilliant performance of my Diversions. I wish I could have been at the Royal Albert Hall to join in the cheers.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anthony Goldstone playing Sergei Lyapunov’s Variations on a Georgian Theme

As a solo pianist he recorded music by Parry and Elgar, both on the composers’ own pianos, while an interest in obscure Russian repertory resulted in a series featuring recordings of solo works by Sergei Lyapunov, Vladimir Rebikov, Reinhold Glière and Anton Arensky. But the classics were by no means ignored: Schubert was a particular favourite (he made six CDs of the solo works), with Chopin and Schumann not far behind.

The partnership with Clemmow, extending over more than two decades, took them all over Great Britain as well as to Europe, the Middle East and the US. An early success was the presentation of the complete duets of Mozart for the bicentenary of the composer’s death in 1991, which led to a comparable, if even more ambitious, project involving the complete works of Schubert for four hands. The latter they performed in a cycle of seven concerts in 1993, repeating the feat on three further occasions. Typically this project included works not found in the collected Schubert edition.

A particular speciality was the performance of well-known works in transcription, including the piano concerto and Peer Gynt music of Grieg, Dvořák’s New World, Mendelssohn’s Scottish, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Vaughan Williams’s Fifth symphonies. Also well-received was their recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s own brilliant version of Scheherazade.

Many of the recordings were made by Goldstone himself in the local church of St John the Baptist, Alkborough, north Lincolnshire, where the couple’s twin Grotrian-Steinweg instruments were housed for a number of years. The complete Schubert box set is due for re-release in early summer, while Goldstone’s last solo recording, Piano at the Ballet, Volume 2, is also due to appear later this year. Both will be on the Divine Art label, for which he made many of his recordings.

He is survived by Caroline and his brother, Stephen.

• Anthony Goldstone, pianist and composer, born 25 July 1944; died 2 January 2017