Geoffrey Tozer

Geoffrey Peter Bede Hawkshaw Tozer (5 November 1954 – 21 August 2009) was an Australian classical pianist and composer.

A child prodigy, he composed an opera at the age of eight and became the youngest recipient of a Churchill Fellowship award at 13.

His career included tours of Europe, America, Australia and China, where he performed the Yellow River Concerto to an estimated audience of 80 million people.

Tozer had more than 100 concertos in his repertoire, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Bartók, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Gerhard.

Tozer recorded for the Chandos label, beginning with the works of Medtner.

He was regarded as a "superb recitalist" and had the ability to improvise, transpose "instantly" and reduce an orchestral score to a piano score at sight.

Tozer won numerous awards and much recognition worldwide, but suffered comparative neglect in Australia, during the last years of his life.

Conceived in Tasmania, Tozer was born in 1954 at Mussoorie, a hill station in the Indian Himalayas.

His mother was Veronica Tozer (born Hawkshaw), a gifted musician and pianist who had become a music teacher to support herself and her two sons after her separation and subsequent divorce from Colonel (later Major-General) Donald Tozer.

In early 1954 she visited Tasmania to recover from a serious medical condition.

There she met Geoffrey Conan-Davies, who was the son of an Anglican priest and who had studied theology himself during his years at Oxford University.

He was a retired colonial administrator, formerly of East Africa, who was married to Ermyntrude (born Malet), with whom he had four children.

Veronica then returned to India, where Tozer was born.

He lived his first four years in India, thanks to the generosity of Princess Usha.

At the age of three, he picked out the notes of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, which his mother had been teaching a pupil.

He moved with his mother and older brother Peter to Melbourne, where Veronica taught him Beethoven, Bach and Bartók.

He attended St Joseph's Parish School, Malvern, and then De La Salle College, Malvern.

In 1962, at the age of eight, Tozer performed Bach's Concerto No. 5 in F minor with the Victorian Symphony Orchestra under Clive Douglas, in a concert that was televised nationally on ABC TV.

In April 1964, at Melbourne's Nicholas Hall, he performed the same concerto with the Astra Orchestra under George Logie-Smith.

In February 1965 he performed the Haydn Piano Concerto in D before a live audience at the Myer Music Bowl, a performance which can be heard on the disc issued to coincide with his Celebration Forty tour in 2004.

Within four years he had played all five Beethoven concertos.

Tozer studied with Eileen Ralf and Keith Humble in Australia, Maria Curcio (the last and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel) in England and Theodore Lettvin in the United States.

Eileen Ralf lived in Hobart, and the airline TAA flew Tozer there and back every week for lessons, free of charge.

He later described Ralf's teaching as "the greatest musical gift given me".

Aged 14, he became the youngest semi-finalist ever at the Leeds International Piano Competition and soon afterwards made his European debut at a BBC Promenade Concert in the Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis.

He was the youngest person to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship.

In 1971, aged 16, he stayed with Benjamin Britten for several weeks.

Britten invited him to perform at the Aldeburgh Festival, where he accompanied the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

In the early 1980s he taught at the University of Michigan.

Tozer performed at the inaugural concert of the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1982.

From 1983 he based himself in Canberra and briefly taught at the ANU School of Music, Australian National University before his touring and recording schedules made this impractical.

His early recordings were not commercially released; his first commercial recording, in 1986, was of John Ireland's Piano Concerto in E-flat major with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Measham, still considered by many the best recording of the work.

In 1989 he worked with Peter Sculthorpe to record a disc of Sculthorpe's works for piano and strings.

When Tatiana Nikolayeva visited Australia in the 1990s, she asked to be introduced to "the one who plays like a Russian" (meaning Tozer).

In 1993, Tozer made his first tour of China, appearing in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities.

In 1994, he made the first complete recording of the four piano concertos of Ottorino Respighi, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Edward Downes.

In May 2001, Tozer was the first Western artist to perform the Yellow River Concerto in China, at the invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Culture.

His performance, which received a standing ovation, was broadcast live on Chinese national television and was watched by an estimated audience of 80 million people.

In May 2003, Tozer gave a recital in New York City with Colin McPhillamy in which they gave the first performance in the United States of Nikolai Medtner's The Treehouse.

This followed an appearance in Birmingham to play in a tribute to Medtner's foremost pupil, the late Edna Iles.