Geoffrey Tozer - Early Life

Early Life

Conceived in Tasmania, Tozer was born in 1954 at Mussoorie, a hill station in the Indian Himalayas. His mother was Veronica Tozer (née 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 the summer of 1954 she visited Tasmania in order to recover from a serious medical condition. There she met Geoffrey Conan-Davies, who was the son of an Anglican minister and who had studied theology himself during one of his years at Oxford University. He was a retired colonial administrator, formerly of East Africa, who was married to Ermyntrude (née 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, in the same class as the historian Edward Duyker and then 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 by 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 D major Concerto 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. Within four years he had played all five Beethoven concertos.