Madge was born in
Adelaide and took his first piano lessons at the age of eight. He later won the 1963
ABC Concerto and Vocal Competition. After winning this competition he left for Europe in 1963 and settled in the
Netherlands. He was appointed professor of piano at the
Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Madge is known for performing long and arduous works. He was the first to record
Leopold Godowsky's ''
Studies on Chopin's Études'', once described as "the most impossibly difficult things ever written for the piano". He has given six complete performances of
Sorabji's
Opus clavicembalisticum, one of the
longest and most difficult works ever written for the piano. In 1982, 52 years after Sorabji premiered the work, Madge gave the work its second public performance. Two of Madge's performances of the work have been released commercially. In 1979, he gave the first complete performance of
Nikos Skalkottas's
32 Piano Pieces. ==References==