Geoffrey Tozer
Geoffrey Tozer (1954–2009) was an Australian concert pianist and composer of the first rank, gifted with perfect pitch, a boundless musical memory, and the ability to improvise, transpose instantly into any key, or reduce an orchestral score at sight.
Born in India on 5 November 1954 and raised in Melbourne, he showed prodigious ability from childhood and made his first recording in 1963. Across nearly fifty years he gave recitals and concerts on five continents, with a vast concerto repertoire and a particular championship of Medtner. His awards included two Churchill Fellowships, two Rubinstein Medals, the Diapason d’Or and a Grammy nomination—the only Australian pianist so honoured. As a Chandos artist he made thirty-four distinguished recordings, with further commercial discs and hundreds of broadcast performances for Australian companies and the ABC.
Live concert documents capture him at full stretch, among them Geoffrey Tozer in Concert: Canberra 1987 (MD 3382), Auckland in 1990, Hobart in 1991, Osaka in 1994, and the Takapuna performance of Mozart’s final piano concerto on Geoffrey Tozer in Concert: Takapuna 1996 (MD 3387). In China he performed the Yellow River Concerto before enormous television audiences.
He was also a composer. Childhood manuscripts and later works, unknown and unpublished at his death, have since been edited and recorded on Pieces from Childhood (MD 3377) and Pieces after Childhood (MD 3417), revealing a lifelong fascination with counterpoint and an ear already tuned to the styles he played.
Press quotes
He was a superb accompanist and a generous collaborator in chamber music, and he was also a composer. After his untimely death on 21 August 2009, journalist James Campbell described him as ‘Australia’s greatest and most recorded pianist’. Across a professional career of nearly fifty years he matured into an artist of international renown, with recitals and concerts on five continents. His awards included the Winston Churchill Fellowship (twice), the Rubinstein Medal (twice), the Diapason d’Or and a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Performance—the only Australian pianist so honoured.
Geoffrey Tozer is featured on the following titles
For Children
Geoffrey Tozer plays piano music by Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Schubert, Prokofiev, Bartók and Schumann written especially for children.
Producer: Producer
Credit: Liner Notes [Annotations]
Other credits
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.