As a pianist, Hambro developed a huge repertoire, and knew almost all of them from memory, which he frequently demonstrated in his "Command Performances," where he gave a list of 100 pieces to audience members and allowed them pick the program from the list. He also put that facility to use in more pressing situations, such as substituting for an ill pianist in a concert of music by Paul Hindemith, conducted by the composer, at New York's Town Hall, for which he learned the complex work in question on 24 hours' notice. Hambro's skills also allowed him to serve as the serious half of a partnership with Victor Borge from 1961 until 1970, and generated a huge amount of laughter as well as immense interest in classical music. And he participated in even less conventional settings, such as teaming up with electronic music virtuoso Gershon Kingsley to record George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, as a duet for grand piano and Moog synthesizer, on the album Gershwin Alive Well Underground (1970). He participated in Peter Schickele's P.D.Q. Bach concerts, and also the Huffnung concerts, both long-established satires of classical music.
Around these engagements and recordings, he had a serious side, and toured extensively and appeared as a soloist with the orchestras in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and London. He was also noted for his work as a chamber musician, and across his career performed with Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Leonard Rose, and Pierre Fournier. He was also a pianist for WQXR in New York for 17 years, and throughout the 1960s performed and recorded with another WQXR colleague, pianist Jascha Zayde. From 1970 until 1987, he was also the head of the piano faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi