Studies
He 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 USA. Eileen Ralf lived in Hobart, and the airline TAA flew Geoffrey to Hobart and back every week for lessons, free of charge. He later described Eileen Ralf's teaching as "the greatest musical gift given me". Aged fourteen years, 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 was the youngest person to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship.
In 1971, aged 16, he stayed with Benjamin Britten for several weeks. Britten invited him to perform at the Aldeburgh Festival, where he accompanied the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
He performed at the inaugural concert of the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1982. In the early 1980s he taught at the University of Michigan. From 1983 he based himself in Canberra and briefly taught at the Canberra School of Music before his touring and recording schedules made this impractical. His early recordings were not commercially released; his first commercial recording, in 1986, was of John Ireland's Piano Concerto in E flat with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Measham, still considered by many the best recording of the work. In 1989 he worked with Peter Sculthorpe to record a disc of Sculthorpe's works for piano and strings.
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Famous quotes containing the word studies:
“What happiness did poor Mother’s studies bring her? It is the melancholy tendency of such studies to separate people from their friends and neighbors and fellow creatures in whom alone lies one’s happiness.”
—Mary Potter Playne (c. 1850–?)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)