Concert pianists and sight reading

[qpalqpal]

Are concert pianists like Rubenstein, Horowitz, Ashkenazy, good at sight reading, better than a normal concert pianist? They are good performers but do they read well?

[sevencircles]

The pianists you mentioned are and were all very good sightreaders. Ashkenazy in particular.

They were propably better then most "normal" pianists but I doubt that someone like Rubinstein was able to read the most demanding contemporary scores for instance

Some of the greatest pianists are not good sightreaders at all actually. The best examples are propably Lazar Berman, Josef Hofmann and Radu Lupu.

Berman in particular was a terrible sightreader and possibly one of those pianists that learned most of his repertoire by ear.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Ian Pace and John Ogdon that is (or was) able to sightread even the hardest avant-garde and new complexity works  at first glance and play them at a slow tempo (if they could coordinate their hands and do the stretches needed etc.)