Geoffrey Tozer died he was 54

Geoffrey Tozer died he was 54. Tozer was an Australian classical pianist.

(5 November 1954 – 21 August 2009)

Geoffrey Peter Bede Hawkshaw Tozer was born to Veronica Tozer and Anglican minister Geoffrey Conan-Davies in the Indian Himalayas and lived his first four years in the hill station of Mussoorie before moving with his mother and older brother Peter^[1] to Melbourne, Australia, where he attended St Joseph's Parish School, Malvern, in the same class as the historian Edward Duyker and then De La Salle College, Malvern.^[2] In 1962, at the age of eight, Tozer performed J. S. Bach's Concerto No. 5 in F Minor with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in a concert that was televised nationally by the ABC. In February 1963 he performed a Haydn concerto 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. In 1964, in Melbourne's Nicholas Hall, he performed a Beethoven concerto with the Astra Orchestra under George Logie-Smith. Within four years he had played all five Beethoven concertos.^[3]

He studied with Eileen Ralf and Keith Humble in Australia, Maria Curcio in England, and Theodore Lettvin in the USA.^[4] He became the youngest semi-finalist ever (aged fourteen) at the Leeds International Piano Competition^[5] 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.^[3]

He performed at the inaugural concert of the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1982. In the early 1980s he taught at the University of Michigan and in the mid 1980s he taught at the Canberra School of Music. ^[2]

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.^[3]

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.

In May 2001, Tozer was the first Western artist to perform the Yellow River Concerto in China.^[4] 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^[6].

Tozer championed the music of many under-recorded composers, such as Respighi, Alan Rawsthorne, John Blackwood McEwen, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Roberto Gerhard, Percy Grainger, John Ireland (the Piano Concerto in E flat) and Nikolai Tcherepnin. At one Berlin Festival, Tozer gave an all-Artur Schnabel concert, in the presence of the entire Schnabel family; he has also recorded Schnabel's music.

Tozer also championed another Melbourne prodigy, pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, who died in 1953. Tozer has said of him: "He was the most stimulating and intellectually powerful pianist Australia has ever produced. He had been completely forgotten before his work reappeared on CD and everyone realised how revolutionary his playing was." Tozer first heard of him when he prepared to play Bach and Beethoven as a seven-year-old for Mewton-Wood's former Melbourne teacher, Waldemar Seidel. "I played a few bars and he jumped up shouting, 'Noel's come back'. I had never heard of him, of course. But, after listening to his records, I realised it was the greatest musical compliment I've ever received."

Geoffrey Tozer was a noted improviser. He sometimes ended formal recitals by improvisations using themes and styles suggested by the audience: Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, Bartók, Piazzolla, Cage, Satie, Gershwin and Brahms simultaneously, and many others.

In January 2003, to celebrate Miriam Hyde's ninetieth birthday, the ABC broadcast Geoffrey Tozer performing her music live, from the Eugene Goossens Hall, Sydney.

Geoffrey received several major awards twice in his lifetime. He won his first Churchill Fellowship at 14 and won a second at 17; he was also twice awarded Israel's Rubenstein Medal, in 1977 and 1980; and he was awarded two consecutive Australian Artists Creative Fellowships, worth more than $500,000 in total, in the 1990s. The grants were inaugurated after Paul Keating met Tozer while he was teaching at the Canberra school where Keating's son Patrick was a student. Keating, who cites Tozer as Australia's greatest pianist, said he felt "ashamed" that a pianist of Tozer's talents was earning only $9,000 a year, so he introduced the fellowships (they are sometimes referred to as "the Keatings") and the first five-year award in 1989 ($329,000) went to Tozer.^[7] The awarding of successive fellowships to the same person was criticised by Larry Sitsky. He explained that his criticism was not personal against Tozer, who was a friend of his, but that it was a matter of principle.^[8]

The fellowships allowed Tozer to travel to London to commence his recording career. He recorded most of the solo piano works of Nikolai Medtner.^[9] His recording of the three Medtner concertos won a Diapason d'Or prize in 1992.^[3] and was also nominated for a Grammy award^[10].

His other international awards included Hungary's Liszt Centenary Medallion, Belgium's Prix Alex De Varies and Britain's Royal Overseas League Medallion, although he received no similar honours in Australia.

In 1996 his recording of piano works by Ferruccio Busoni won the Soundscapes (Australia) prize for "Record of the Year".

On 21 August 2009^[11] Geoffrey Tozer died from liver disease at the East Malvern house in Melbourne in which he lived as a child, having been released from the Alfred Hospital the previous week. He was survived by four of five siblings.^[2]