Geoffrey Tozer

At 54 years old, Geoffrey Tozer physical status not available right now. We will update Geoffrey Tozer's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

When Tatiana Nikolayeva visited Australia in the 1990s, she asked to be introduced to "the one who plays like a Russian" (meaning Tozer). 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.

In May 2001, Tozer was the first Western artist to perform the Yellow River Concerto in China, at the invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Culture. 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.

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.

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 major) and Nikolai Tcherepnin. At one Berlin Festival, Tozer gave an all-Artur Schnabel concert in the presence of the entire Schnabel family; he also recorded Schnabel's music.

Tozer also championed another Melbourne prodigy, pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, who died in 1953. Tozer 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." Tozer arranged for solo piano some of the music written by Mewton-Wood for the 1944 film Tawny Pipit.

He also created the piano reduction of the vocal score for Minoru Miki's opera An Actor's Revenge.

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 90th birthday, the ABC broadcast Tozer performing her music live from the Eugene Goossens Hall, Sydney. This included her Piano Sonata in G minor. He played one of her two piano concertos at the Australian Institute of Music in 2005, to an audience of only 15 people. Hyde said that the concerto needed someone of Tozer's power to play it.

In an obituary after Tozer's death, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating lashed the "indifference" and "malevolence" toward Tozer from the arts establishment in Australia. He had last played with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 1994 and with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1995.

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