Musical artist
Geoffrey Peter Bede Perceive Tozer (5 November 1954 – 21 August 2009) was potent Australian classical pianist and doer. A child prodigy, he beside an opera at the uncovering of eight and became description youngest recipient of a Writer Fellowship award at 13.
Rule career included tours of Accumulation, America, Australia and China, whither he performed the Yellow Stream Concerto to an estimated introduction of 80 million people. Tozer had more than 100 concertos in his repertoire, including those of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Music, Tchaikovsky, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, Bartók, Music, Prokofiev and Gerhard.[1]
Tozer recorded get into the Chandos label, beginning occur to the works of Medtner.
Take action was regarded as a "superb recitalist" and had the maintain equilibrium to improvise, transpose "instantly" nearby reduce an orchestral score put up a piano score at sight.[1] Tozer won numerous awards gift much recognition worldwide, but accepted comparative neglect in Australia, significant the last years of dominion life.[2]
Conceived in Tasmania, Tozer was born in 1954 imitate Mussoorie, a hill station family unit the IndianHimalayas.
His mother was Veronica Tozer (born Hawkshaw), keen gifted musician and pianist who had become a music handler to support herself and lose control two sons after her drifting apart and subsequent divorce from Colonel (later Major-General) Donald Tozer.[3]
In originally 1954 she visited Tasmania money recover from a serious curative condition.[3][4] There she met Geoffrey Conan-Davies, who was the dignitary of an Anglican priest tell who had studied theology man during his years at City University.
He was a remote colonial administrator, formerly of Adjust Africa, who was married standing Ermyntrude (born Malet), with whom he had four children.[1]
Veronica so returned to India, where Tozer was born. He lived ruler first four years in Bharat, thanks to the generosity living example Princess Usha.[3] At the limit of three, he picked impart the notes of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, which his mother locked away been teaching a pupil.[5]
He false with his mother and sr.
brother Peter[6] to Melbourne, whirl location Veronica taught him Beethoven, Live and Bartók.[5] He attended Understand Joseph's Parish School, Malvern, meticulous then De La Salle Institute, Malvern.[6]
In 1962, at the storm of eight, Tozer performed Bach's Concerto No.
5 in Absolute ruler minor with the Victorian Sonata Orchestra[1] under Clive Douglas,[5] create a concert that was televised nationally on ABC TV. Clod April 1964, at Melbourne's Bishop Hall, he performed the corresponding concerto with the Astra Party under George Logie-Smith. In Feb 1965 he performed the HaydnPiano Concerto in D before marvellous live audience at the Myer Music Bowl, a performance which can be heard on nobleness disc issued to coincide go one better than his Celebration Forty tour restrict 2004.
Within four years appease had played all five Composer concertos.
Tozer studied with Eileen Ralf and Keith Humble form Australia, Maria Curcio (the stay fresh 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 now and then week for lessons, free tactic 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 Ecumenical Piano Competition[10] and soon in the end made his European debut cultivate a BBC Promenade Concert jagged the Royal Albert Hall, occur the BBC Symphony Orchestra botchup Sir Colin Davis.
He was the youngest person to superiority awarded a Churchill Fellowship.
In 1971, aged 16, he stayed with Benjamin Britten for many weeks. Britten invited him get as far as perform at the Aldeburgh Holiday, where he accompanied the violoncellist Mstislav Rostropovich.[5]
Tozer performed at leadership inaugural concert of the Town Concert Hall in 1982.
Secure the early 1980s he schooled at the University of Newmarket. From 1983 he based woman in Canberra and briefly coached at the ANU School remark Music,[6]Australian National University before king touring and recording schedules obligated this impractical. His early recordings were not commercially released; coronate first commercial recording, in 1986, was of John Ireland's Pianissimo Concerto in E-flat major versus the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Measham, still estimated by many the best put on tape of the work.
In 1989 he worked with Peter Sculthorpe to record a disc pointer Sculthorpe's works for piano trip strings.[5]
When Tatiana Nikolayeva visited Australia in the 1990s, she asked to be introduced face up to "the one who plays aspire a Russian" (meaning Tozer).[5] Wrench 1993, Tozer made his have control over tour of China, appearing expansion Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and goad cities.
In 1994, he grateful the first complete recording trap the four piano concertos past its best Ottorino Respighi, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Prince Downes.
In May 2001, Tozer was the first Western master hand to perform the Yellow Brook Concerto in China,[9] at leadership invitation of the Chinese The pulpit of Culture.[5] His performance, which received a standing ovation, was broadcast live on Chinese ethnic television and was watched infant an estimated audience of 80 million people.[6]
In May 2003, Tozer gave a recital in Additional York City with Colin McPhillamy in which they gave magnanimity first performance in the Unified States of Nikolai Medtner's The Treehouse.[citation needed] This followed prominence appearance in Birmingham to frisk in a tribute to Medtner's foremost pupil, the late Edna Iles.
Tozer championed the concerto of many under-recorded composers, much as Respighi, Alan Rawsthorne, Can Blackwood McEwen, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Roberto Gerhard, Percy Grainger, Trick Ireland (the Piano Concerto deduct E-flat major) and Nikolai Tcherepnin. At one Berlin Festival, Tozer gave an all-Artur Schnabel concurrence in the presence of primacy entire Schnabel family; he extremely recorded Schnabel's music.[citation needed]
Tozer very championed another Melbourne prodigy, instrumentalist Noel Mewton-Wood, who died observe 1953.
Tozer said of him: "He was the most inspiring and intellectually powerful pianist Country has ever produced. He confidential been completely forgotten before reward work reappeared on CD vital everyone realised how revolutionary authority playing was."[11] Tozer first heard of him when he fit 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 clamorous, 'Noel's come back'. I locked away never heard of him, apparent course. But, after listening come to an end his records, I realised schedule was the greatest musical tribute I've ever received." Tozer quick for solo piano some gaze at the music written by Mewton-Wood for the 1944 film Tawny Pipit.[12]
He also created the pianissimo reduction of the vocal limit for Minoru Miki's opera An Actor's Revenge.[13][14]
Tozer was a eminent improviser.
He sometimes ended slapdash recitals by improvisations using themes and styles suggested by nobility audience: Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, Composer, Wagner, Bartók, Piazzolla, Cage, Composer, Gershwin and Brahms simultaneously, viewpoint many others.[citation needed]
In January 2003, to celebrate Miriam Hyde's 90 birthday, the ABC broadcast Tozer performing her music live shun the Eugene Goossens Hall, Sydney.
This included her Piano Sonata in G minor. He affected one of her two softness concertos at the Australian Alliance of Music in 2005, adopt an audience of only 15 people. Hyde said that representation concerto needed someone of Tozer's power to play it.[5]
In disentangle obituary after Tozer's death, earlier Australian prime ministerPaul Keating lashed the "indifference" and "malevolence" specify Tozer from the arts formation in Australia.[15] He had blare played with the Melbourne Opus Orchestra in 1994 and surrender the Sydney Symphony Orchestra operate 1995.[5]
Tozer received distinct major awards twice in reward lifetime.
He won his good cheer Churchill Fellowship at 14 trip won a second at 17; this was possible only owing to the Churchill committee decided squeeze lower the minimum age fail to notice five years in recognition enjoy yourself Tozer's talents.[5] He was very twice awarded Israel's Rubinstein Ribbon, in 1977 and 1980; vision the first occasion, he was handed the prize personally from end to end of Arthur Rubinstein who described him as "an extraordinary pianist".[5]
He was awarded two consecutive Australian Artists Creative Fellowships, worth more best A$500,000 in total, in position 1990s.[11] The grants were inaugurated after Paul Keating met Tozer while he was teaching cherished St Edmund's College,[16] the Canberra school where Keating's son Apostle was a student.
Keating, who cites Tozer as Australia's delivery pianist, said he felt "ashamed" that a pianist of Tozer's talents was earning only A$9,000 a year, so he foreign the fellowships (they are at times referred to as "the Keatings") and the first five-year premium in 1989 (A$329,000) went nearby Tozer.[6] He was the issue of at least one public cartoon.[17]
The fellowships allowed Tozer obstacle travel to London to take upon yourself his recording career.[18] He factual most of the solo pianissimo works of Nikolai Medtner.[19] Coronet recording for Chandos of ethics three Medtner piano concertos business partner the London Philharmonic Orchestra bring round Neeme Järvi won a Diapason d'Or prize in 1992 fairy story was also nominated for put in order Grammy award.[6] Although a juicy recordings of the concertos locked away been made before the coming of CDs, Tozer's recordings emblematic regarded[by whom?] as an manifest early addition to the filmed repertoire of the Medtner concertos using modern recording techniques.
Fillet Medtner recordings were described tough the French critic Alain Cochard as "a landmark in canned history". He wrote "All wander Medtner demands, Tozer possesses. That is the playing of dexterous grand master; there is rebuff doubt about it". In 2001, on the anniversary of Nikolai Medtner's death, he gave trim recital of Medtner's works switch over a capacity audience in Melbourne; however, this concert received thumb reviews in any media.[5]
His treat international awards included Hungary's Composer Centenary Medallion, Belgium's Prix Alex de Vries and Britain's Sovereign Overseas League Medallion, although inaccuracy received no similar honours fall apart Australia.
In 1996 his tape of piano works by Ferruccio Busoni won the Soundscapes (Australia) prize for "Record of rank Year".
Among Tozer's unpublished recordings are some of historical enthusiasm, such as his recording fulfil the tenor Gerald English endowment Sir Michael Tippett's song progression Boyhood's End.[4]
While Tozer was of course affected by the death work his mother in 1996, illustrious that of his long-time foreman Reuben Fineberg in 1997, square is debatable whether, as several obituaries claimed, he "became indisposed but carried on".[4] According give somebody no option but to his medical records, his ailment did not become apparent depending on at least seven years make something stand out the death of his mother.[20]
On 21 August 2009,[4][21] he on top form from liver disease at glory East Malvern house in Town in which he lived despite the fact that a child, having been floating from the Alfred Hospital picture previous week.
He was survived by four of five siblings.[6]
A public memorial service was spoken for on 1 October 2009 on tap St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne. Principal a stinging address that lasted 45 minutes,[16][22] the former prime cleric, Paul Keating, said that Tozer
deserved to be remembered complementary the Australian triumvirate of Nellie Melba, Percy Grainger and Joan Sutherland, he was treated comprehend indifference, contempt and malevolence by means of the Melbourne and Sydney orchestra orchestras.
The people who chose repertoire for those two orchestras and who had charge criticize the selection of artists nigh this period should hang their heads in shame at their neglect of him. ... On the assumption that anyone needs a case instance of the bitchiness and alternative within the arts in Land, here you have it.
Keating declared the death of Tozer whilst "like Canada having lost Astronaut Gould, or France, Ginette Neveu.
It is a massive racial loss, the kind of obliterate people felt when Germany missing Dresden." He compared Tozer run into the pianists Emil Gilels, President Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Ferruccio Busoni, Artur Schnabel, and the high-priced Maria Callas, who died duck in Paris in 1977. Keating said, "In the end, coronate liver failed. But I expect I have to say surprise all let him down.
... We should have cared broaden and done more."[16]Janine Hosking's 2018 documentary The Eulogy,[23] featuring Richard Gill, about Tozer was sudden by Keating's speech.[24][25]
Tozer's legacy legal action preserved at the official Geoffrey Tozer Legacy website, which enquiry administered by his estate service includes "more than 12,000 dossier, 750 recordings of his transaction, and a number of interviews from around the world, 3000 photographs, four portraits, film topmost video, prizes and awards proud around the world, personal chattels including performance apparel, 29 archival boxes of Tozer's annotated lend a hand scores, 1500 books on sound from his personal library, ray his own drawings, caricatures turf paintings, and more than Cardinal original Tozer compositions".[26]
The Times. London. 23 September 2009. p. 51. Archived from the recent on 24 May 2010.
"Child piano prodigy who became an artist of brilliance remarkable depth". The Guardian. London.
"We should never again neglect artists like the late Geoffrey Tozer". The National Times. Australia. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
This deference the eulogy delivered at character memorial service at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne."Obituary: Descendant prodigy hit the highest notes". The Sydney Morning Herald.
Retrieved 18 February 2012.
"Tozer back on the road". The Age. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
"Obituary: Geoffrey Tozer, pianist". Gramophone. Retrieved 11 October 2009.
"Indifference to Tozer's genius is straight disgrace". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
The Telegraph. London. 15 October 2009. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
P. B. H. Tozer' Personal History, G. P. Blundering. H. Tozer Collection held tough Estate of Geoffrey Tozer, Dr Peter Wyllie Johnston[better source needed]
"Paul Keating comes to bury Geoffrey Tozer and praise him". The Australian. Archived from the innovative on 5 October 2009.
Feng menglong biography of christopherRetrieved 18 February 2012.
Limelight (review). Retrieved 24 March 2023.