![]() ![]() Britten invited him to perform at the Aldeburgh Festival, where he accompanied the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1971, aged 16, he stayed with Benjamin Britten for several weeks. He was the youngest person to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship. 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 under Sir Colin Davis. He later described Ralf's teaching as "the greatest musical gift given me". Eileen Ralf lived in Hobart, and the airline TAA flew Tozer there and back every week for lessons, free of charge. 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. Within four years he had played all five Beethoven concertos. In February 1965 he performed the Haydn Piano Concerto in D before a live audience at the Myer Music Bowl, a performance which can be heard on the disc issued to coincide with his Celebration Forty tour in 2004. In April 1964, at Melbourne's Nicholas Hall, he performed the same concerto with the Astra Orchestra under George Logie-Smith. 5 in F minor with the Victorian Symphony Orchestra under Clive Douglas, in a concert that was televised nationally on ABC TV. In 1962, at the age of eight, Tozer performed Bach's Concerto No. He attended St Joseph's Parish School, Malvern, and then De La Salle College, Malvern. He moved with his mother and older brother Peter to Melbourne, where Veronica taught him Beethoven, Bach and Bartók. At the age of three, he picked out the notes of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, which his mother had been teaching a pupil. ![]() He lived his first four years in India, thanks to the generosity of Princess Usha. Veronica then returned to India, where Tozer was born. He was a retired colonial administrator, formerly of East Africa, who was married to Ermyntrude (born Malet), with whom he had four children. 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. In early 1954 she visited Tasmania to recover from a serious medical condition. 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. Conceived in Tasmania, Tozer was born in 1954 at Mussoorie, a hill station in the Indian Himalayas. ![]()
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