U of A to celebrate late Tucson pianist with Brahms requiem

The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music will remember one of its own with a performance Sunday, April 30, of Brahms’s comforting “Ein Deutsches Requiem” (German Requiem), a large-scale work for orchestra and choir.

Arizona Symphony Orchestra and UA Symphonic Choir will join forces in the 3:30 p.m. performance at Crowder Hall, at East Speedway and North Park Avenue on the UA campus, with UA alumni soprano Asleif Willmer and baritone Octavio Moreno as soloists.

The concert will be dedicated to retired piano professor Paula Fan, who died in February while on tour with baritone Jeremy Huw Williams in Australia. She was 71.

“Brahms intended it as a requiem to comfort and solace the living so it has a universal theme,” said UA Choral Director Elizabeth Schauer. “Paula touched so many lives that it is appropriate that this universal work should be performed in her honor.”

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Brahms’ seven-movement German Requiem, composed between 1865-68, was his longest composition, clocking in at nearly 80 minutes, and was inspired by the death of his mother in 1865 and his lingering grief over the death of Robert Schumann nine years earlier. But unlike other composers of his day whose requiems were based on Biblical liturgy, Brahms saw the requiem as an opportunity to celebrate the dead while comforting those left behind. While it is based on sacred texts, the work is non-liturgical.

This will be the first time the UA has performed the piece since 2007. Tickets are $10 through music.arizona.edu/tickets.