Geoffrey Tozer
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Geoffrey Tozer (born November 1954) is an Australian pianist of great international renown. He was born in the Indian Himalayas.
Tozer's mother lived much of her life in India. She moved with her husband to Tasmania after Indian independence in 1949, however their marriage did not last. When pregnant with Geoffrey, she set out for England, but stopped half way and settled again in India in the Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie where Tozer spent the first four years of his life before moving to Australia. Tozer's paternal grandfather John Conan-Davies started life as a Welsh coal miner, but was later ordained as a minister of the Lady Huntingdon Connection and then later transferred to the Church of England. He has four half siblings, Bliss, Meredith, Stephen and Tim Conan-Davies. Meredith married C.S. Lewis's step-son Douglas Gresham.
[edit] Career Biography
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 1964, in Melbourne’s Nicholas Hall, he made his concert debut with the Astra Orchestra under George Logie Smith.
After studying in Australia and London he made his European debut at a BBC Promenade Concert in the Royal Albert Hall.
He performed at the inaugural concert of the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1982.
In the early 1990s he taught at the Canberra School of Music.
In 1997 he created controversy when he declared that he was relocating to Europe because Melbourne was "just a remote, provincial, large city". He has since returned to Melbourne but travels frequently to meet international commitments.
There was another media outcry after he received two consecutive Australian Artists Creative Fellowship grants, worth more than $500,000, in the 1990s. The "Keatings" (as the fellowships were known) paid $11.7 million to 65 artists between 1989 and 1996. It was Geoffrey Tozer who inspired the fellowships in the first place. Tozer was the music teacher of the son of the then Prime Minister Paul Keating, who was shocked when he learned Tozer earned only $9,000 a year as a professional pianist and teacher. The fellowship kick-started Tozer's London recording career by paying for his travel. This led to Tozer being the first pianist to record most of the solo piano works of Nikolai Medtner on CD. Medtner's patron, the Prince of Mysore, was a friend of Tozer's mother. Friends urged Tozer to apply for a second fellowship when he was in the middle of his Medtner recordings. "Perhaps the board wanted to please me," Keating said after criticism ensued. "But Tozer is one of the greatest Liszt pianists in the world. He's Australia's greatest pianist."
In May 2003, Geoffrey Tozer gave a recital in New York with Colin McPhillamy, in which they gave the first performance in the USA of 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 Geoffrey Tozer was the first Western artist to perform the Yellow River Piano Concerto in China. His performance, which received a standing ovation, was broadcast live on Chinese national television.
Tozer has championed the recordings of many under-recorded composers, such as Alan Rawsthorne, McEwen, Erich Korngold, Roberto Gerhard, Ottorino Respighi, Percy Grainger, 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 champions another Melbourne prodigy, pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, who committed suicide 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."
In 1996 his recording of piano works by Ferruccio Busoni won the Soundscapes (Australia) prize for Record of the Year.
Geoffrey Tozer is a noted improvisor. He has 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.
