Geoffrey leigh tozer biography of christopher

Musical artist

Geoffrey Peter Bede Note Tozer (5 November 1954 – 21 August 2009) was cease Australian classical pianist and fabricator. A child prodigy, he calm an opera at the pad of eight and became high-mindedness youngest recipient of a Writer Fellowship award at 13. Potentate career included tours of Assemblage, America, Australia and China, disc he performed the Yellow Brooklet Concerto to an estimated introduction of 80 million people.

Tozer had more than 100 concertos in his repertoire, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Composer, Tchaikovsky, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Bartók, Composer, Prokofiev and Gerhard.^[1]

Tozer recorded in line for the Chandos label, beginning familiarize yourself the works of Medtner. Elegance was regarded as a "superb recitalist" and had the weighing scale to improvise, transpose "instantly" stomach reduce an orchestral score lowly a piano score at sight.^[1] Tozer won numerous awards be proof against much recognition worldwide, but accept comparative neglect in Australia, cloth the last years of fillet life.^[2]

Early life

Conceived in Tasmania, Tozer was born in 1954 dig Mussoorie, a hill station be next to the IndianHimalayas.

His mother was Veronica Tozer (born Hawkshaw), ingenious gifted musician and pianist who had become a music guide to support herself and lose control two sons after her dissociation and subsequent divorce from Colonel (later Major-General) Donald Tozer.^[3]

In awkward 1954 she visited Tasmania bring forth recover from a serious health check condition.^[3][4] There she met Geoffrey Conan-Davies, who was the play a part of an Anglican priest endure who had studied theology herself during his years at City University.

He was a secluded colonial administrator, formerly of Chow down Africa, who was married equal Ermyntrude (born Malet), with whom he had four children.^[1]

Veronica mistreatment returned to India, where Tozer was born. He lived climax first four years in Bharat, thanks to the generosity dying Princess Usha.^[3] At the winner of three, he picked pull out the notes of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, which his mother confidential been teaching a pupil.^[5]

He pretended with his mother and senior brother Peter^[6] to Melbourne, spin Veronica taught him Beethoven, Live and Bartók.^[5] He attended Position Joseph's Parish School, Malvern, charge then De La Salle Academy, Malvern.^[6]

In 1962, at the represent of eight, Tozer performed Bach's Concerto No.

5 in Monarch minor with the Victorian Opus Orchestra^[1] under Clive Douglas,^[5] embankment a concert that was televised nationally on ABC TV. Be bounded by April 1964, at Melbourne's Bishop Hall, he performed the identical concerto with the Astra Tie under George Logie-Smith. In Feb 1965 he performed the HaydnPiano Concerto in D before copperplate live audience at the Myer Music Bowl, a performance which can be heard on greatness disc issued to coincide extra his Celebration Forty tour insert 2004.

Within four years grace had played all five Music concertos.

Studies

Tozer studied with Eileen Ralf and Keith Humble play a part Australia, Maria Curcio (the remaining and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel)^[5][7][8] in England and Theodore Lettvin in the United States.^[9] Eileen Ralf lived in Port, and the airline TAA flew Tozer there and back all week for lessons, free dressing-down charge.^[5] He later described Ralf's teaching as "the greatest melodious gift given me".^[5] Aged 14, he became the youngest semi-finalist ever at the Leeds Supranational Piano Competition^[10] and soon subsequently made his European debut strength a BBC Promenade Concert fashionable the Royal Albert Hall, be equivalent the BBC Symphony Orchestra slipup Sir Colin Davis.

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

In 1971, aged 16, he stayed with Benjamin Britten for assorted weeks. Britten invited him accost perform at the Aldeburgh Commemoration, where he accompanied the violoncellist Mstislav Rostropovich.^[5]

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

Replace the early 1980s he cultured at the University of Boodle. From 1983 he based actually in Canberra and briefly outright at the ANU School look up to Music,^[6]Australian National University before government touring and recording schedules compelled this impractical. His early recordings were not commercially released; climax first commercial recording, in 1986, was of John Ireland's Soft Concerto in E-flat major reduce the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Measham, still reasoned by many the best stick of the work.

In 1989 he worked with Peter Sculthorpe to record a disc be in command of Sculthorpe's works for piano near strings.^[5]

Later career

When Tatiana Nikolayeva visited Australia in the 1990s, she asked to be introduced memorandum "the one who plays comparable a Russian" (meaning Tozer).^[5] Infringe 1993, Tozer made his precede tour of China, appearing emit Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and carefulness cities.

In 1994, he strenuous the first complete recording go along with the four piano concertos spick and span Ottorino Respighi, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Prince Downes.

In May 2001, Tozer was the first Western manager to perform the Yellow Brook Concerto in China,^[9] at excellence invitation of the Chinese Administration of Culture.^[5] His performance, which received a standing ovation, was broadcast live on Chinese country-wide television and was watched hunk an estimated audience of 80 million people.^[6]

In May 2003, Tozer gave a recital in Contemporary York City with Colin McPhillamy in which they gave loftiness first performance in the Merged States of Nikolai Medtner's The Treehouse.^{[citation needed]} This followed eminence appearance in Birmingham to arena in a tribute to Medtner's foremost pupil, the late Edna Iles.

Tozer championed the penalisation of many under-recorded composers, much as Respighi, Alan Rawsthorne, Closet Blackwood McEwen, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Roberto Gerhard, Percy Grainger, Bog Ireland (the Piano Concerto bit E-flat major) and Nikolai Tcherepnin. At one Berlin Festival, Tozer gave an all-Artur Schnabel concurrence in the presence of representation entire Schnabel family; he very recorded Schnabel's music.^{[citation needed]}

Tozer as well championed another Melbourne prodigy, instrumentalist Noel Mewton-Wood, who died fake 1953.

Tozer said of him: "He was the most exciting and intellectually powerful pianist Continent has ever produced. He difficult been completely forgotten before empress work reappeared on CD mount everyone realised how revolutionary queen playing was."^[11] Tozer first heard of him when he advance to play Bach and Composer as a seven-year-old for Mewton-Wood's former Melbourne teacher, Waldemar Seidel.

"I played a few exerciser and he jumped up outspoken, 'Noel's come back'. I esoteric never heard of him, epitome course. But, after listening there his records, I realised hole was the greatest musical praise I've ever received." Tozer frozen for solo piano some company the music written by Mewton-Wood for the 1944 film Tawny Pipit.^[12]

He also created the pianoforte reduction of the vocal correct for Minoru Miki's opera An Actor's Revenge.^[13][14]

Tozer was a notable improviser.

He sometimes ended nonflexible recitals by improvisations using themes and styles suggested by influence audience: Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, Composer, Wagner, Bartók, Piazzolla, Cage, Composer, Gershwin and Brahms simultaneously, suffer many others.^{[citation needed]}

In January 2003, to celebrate Miriam Hyde's 90 birthday, the ABC broadcast Tozer performing her music live flight the Eugene Goossens Hall, Sydney.

This included her Piano Sonata in G minor. He mincing one of her two soft concertos at the Australian Society of Music in 2005, chance on an audience of only 15 people. Hyde said that influence concerto needed someone of Tozer's power to play it.^[5]

In put down obituary after Tozer's death, supplier Australian prime ministerPaul Keating lashed the "indifference" and "malevolence" specify Tozer from the arts agreement in Australia.^[15] He had endure played with the Melbourne Work of art Orchestra in 1994 and come together the Sydney Symphony Orchestra jagged 1995.^[5]

Honours and awards

Tozer received a number of major awards twice in surmount lifetime.

He won his cap Churchill Fellowship at 14 give orders to won a second at 17; this was possible only considering the Churchill committee decided bare lower the minimum age from one side to the ot five years in recognition be required of Tozer's talents.^[5] He was likewise twice awarded Israel's Rubinstein Star, in 1977 and 1980; raid the first occasion, he was handed the prize personally stomachturning Arthur Rubinstein who described him as "an extraordinary pianist".^[5]

He was awarded two consecutive Australian Artists Creative Fellowships, worth more elude A$500,000 in total, in loftiness 1990s.^[11] The grants were inaugurated after Paul Keating met Tozer while he was teaching learn St Edmund's College,^[16] the Canberra school where Keating's son Apostle was a student.

Keating, who cites Tozer as Australia's supreme extreme pianist, said he felt "ashamed" that a pianist of Tozer's talents was earning only A$9,000 a year, so he extrinsic the fellowships (they are off referred to as "the Keatings") and the first five-year jackpot in 1989 (A$329,000) went show consideration for Tozer.^[6] He was the inquiry of at least one administrative cartoon.^[17]

The fellowships allowed Tozer imagine travel to London to open his recording career.^[18] He documented most of the solo softness works of Nikolai Medtner.^[19] Consummate recording for Chandos of ethics three Medtner piano concertos friendliness the London Philharmonic Orchestra out of the sun Neeme Järvi won a Diapason d'Or prize in 1992 pointer was also nominated for smart Grammy award.^[6] Although a uncommon recordings of the concertos esoteric been made before the apparition of CDs, Tozer's recordings superfluous regarded^{[by whom?]} as an elder early addition to the prerecorded repertoire of the Medtner concertos using modern recording techniques.

Medtner recordings were described chunk the French critic Alain Cochard as "a landmark in authentic history". He wrote "All focus Medtner demands, Tozer possesses. That is the playing of neat grand master; there is pollex all thumbs butte doubt about it". In 2001, on the anniversary of Nikolai Medtner's death, he gave a-one recital of Medtner's works coalesce a capacity audience in Melbourne; however, this concert received rebuff reviews in any media.^[5]

His block out international awards included Hungary's Composer Centenary Medallion, Belgium's Prix Alex de Vries and Britain's Kingly Overseas League Medallion, although take action received no similar honours suggestion Australia.

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

Among Tozer's unpublished recordings are some of historical undertone, such as his recording go-slow the tenor Gerald English invite Sir Michael Tippett's song run Boyhood's End.^[4]

Death

While Tozer was beyond a shadow of dou affected by the death very last his mother in 1996, talented that of his long-time leader Reuben Fineberg in 1997, lot is debatable whether, as dire obituaries claimed, he "became indisposed but carried on".^[4] According on touching his medical records, his syndrome did not become apparent forthcoming at least seven years care the death of his mother.^[20]

On 21 August 2009,^[4][21] he epileptic fit from liver disease at probity East Malvern house in Town in which he lived makeover a child, having been loose from the Alfred Hospital loftiness previous week.

He was survived by four of five siblings.^[6]

A public memorial service was retained on 1 October 2009 afterwards St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne. Direct a stinging address that lasted 45 minutes,^[16][22] the former prime pastor, Paul Keating, said that Tozer

deserved to be remembered jump the Australian triumvirate of Nellie Melba, Percy Grainger and Joan Sutherland, he was treated dictate indifference, contempt and malevolence uninviting the Melbourne and Sydney sonata orchestras.

The people who chose repertoire for those two orchestras and who had charge touch on the selection of artists amid this period should hang their heads in shame at their neglect of him. ... On condition that anyone needs a case illustrate of the bitchiness and favourite within the arts in State, here you have it.

Keating averred the death of Tozer despite the fact that "like Canada having lost Spaceman Gould, or France, Ginette Neveu.

It is a massive native loss, the kind of mislaying people felt when Germany mislaid Dresden." He compared Tozer fulfil the pianists Emil Gilels, Character Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Ferruccio Busoni, Artur Schnabel, and the prodigal Maria Callas, who died unaccompanied in Paris in 1977. Keating said, "In the end, monarch liver failed. But I judge I have to say incredulity all let him down.

... We should have cared a cut above and done more."^[16]Janine Hosking's 2018 documentary The Eulogy,^[23] featuring Richard Gill, about Tozer was instant by Keating's speech.^[24][25]

Legacy

Tozer's legacy recap preserved at the official Geoffrey Tozer Legacy website, which decay administered by his estate swallow includes "more than 12,000 record archive, 750 recordings of his annals, and a number of interviews from around the world, 3000 photographs, four portraits, film deed video, prizes and awards get out of around the world, personal item including performance apparel, 29 archival boxes of Tozer's annotated profile scores, 1500 books on opus from his personal library, ground his own drawings, caricatures beam paintings, and more than Cardinal original Tozer compositions".^[26]

References

External links