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.
[1] Tozer won numerous awards and much recognition worldwide, but suffered comparative neglect in Australia, during the last years of his life.
Tozer studied with Eileen Ralf and Keith Humble in Australia, Maria Curcio (the last and favourite pupil of Artur Schnabel)[5][7][8] in England and Theodore Lettvin in the United States.
[9] Eileen Ralf lived in Hobart, and the airline TAA flew Tozer there and back every week for lessons, free of charge.
From 1983 he based himself in Canberra and briefly taught at the ANU School of Music,[6] Australian National University before his touring and recording schedules made this impractical.
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,[9] at the invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Culture.
[5] 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.
[citation needed] This followed an appearance in Birmingham to play in a tribute to Medtner's foremost pupil, the late Edna Iles.
"[11] 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.
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.
[citation needed] In January 2003, to celebrate Miriam Hyde's 90th birthday, the ABC broadcast Tozer performing her music live from the Eugene Goossens Hall, Sydney.
[19] His recording for Chandos of the three Medtner piano concertos with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Neeme Järvi won a Diapason d'Or prize in 1992 and was also nominated for a Grammy award.
[4] While Tozer was undoubtedly affected by the death of his mother in 1996, and that of his long-time manager Reuben Fineberg in 1997, it is debatable whether, as some obituaries claimed, he "became unwell but carried on".
[20] On 21 August 2009,[4][21] he died from liver disease at the East Malvern house in Melbourne in which he lived as a child, having been released from the Alfred Hospital the previous week.
In a stinging address that lasted 45 minutes,[16][22] the former prime minister, Paul Keating, said that Tozer deserved to be remembered alongside the Australian triumvirate of Nellie Melba, Percy Grainger and Joan Sutherland, he was treated with indifference, contempt and malevolence by the Melbourne and Sydney symphony orchestras.
If anyone needs a case example of the bitchiness and preference within the arts in Australia, here you have it.Keating described the death of Tozer as "like Canada having lost Glenn Gould, or France, Ginette Neveu.
He compared Tozer to the pianists Emil Gilels, Arthur Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Ferruccio Busoni, Artur Schnabel, and the soprano Maria Callas, who died alone in Paris in 1977.