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 Chandos Records, 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, where, according to the historian Edward Duyker, he was subjected to "two years of violence and toxic stress by Brother Anselm [Hallam]", a notorious paedophile. He then attended 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 Sidney 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 conducted by Sir Colin Davis. He was the youngest person to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship.