At the 1955 Cheltenham Music Festival he performed the premiere of Humphrey Searle's Piano Concerto No.2 with Sir John Barbirolli and The Hallé orchestra.
He appeared as a soloist with all the leading British orchestras, under conductors including Sir Colin Davis and Zubin Mehta.
The stylish collarless suit which Pierre Cardin designed for him attracted the attention of Brian Epstein, who asked if the Beatles could adopt the same style.
During World War II, a bomb had landed in his back garden, decapitating the girl next door and ripping off his piano teacher's arm.
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, Lythgoe astonished both the conductor and himself by declining.
A breakdown caused him to abandon performances altogether, and in 1976, he accepted the post of Dean Of Faculty at the Music School Settlement in Cleveland, Ohio,[5] where he became a well-loved figure, appearing again in his own television series, A Touch of Lythgoe, produced by public television station WVIZ, and playing occasional concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, some of which were conducted by his friend, Sir Colin Davis.