On February 4, composer and organist Helen Tobias-Duesberg, the youngest daughter of composer Rudolf Tobias, died in Savannah, United States.
Helen Tobias-Duesberg was born in New York on June 11, 1919. She studied composition at the Tallinn Conservatoire with Heino Eller and Artur Kapp, and organ with August Topman. In 1943, she graduated from the conservatoire as an organist. Later on, she complemented her studies in Berlin University of Music – in the same school, where once had worked her father.
After the moving to America in 1951, she took further studies in the field of composition and worked as organist in several churches in New York.
As a composer, Helen Tobias-Duesberg has created a number of vocal and chamber works, as well as symphonic music, of which wider attention has gained her Requiem for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra. Since 1989, Helen Tobias-Duesberg had repeatedly visited Estonia, where also her compositions have been performed.
Malle Maltis