Ingrid Haebler, pianist known for her mastery of Mozart, is dead
Ingrid Haebler, a pianist who was particularly acclaimed for her performances and recordings of Mozart’s works, and who impressed critics in her twenties with elegant interpretations that set her apart from other musicians of her time, died on May 14. being 96.
Decca Classics, which last year released ‘Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy’, a box set containing dozens of recordings she made for the Philips label, posted news of her death on Facebook. The Austrian newspaper The Salzburger Nachrichten reported her death, attributing the information to her circle of friends, but did not say where she died.
Mrs. Haebler was born in Vienna, probably on June 20, 1926 (according to some news reports, 1929). Her father was a baron. Her mother played the piano and began teaching Ingrid when she was a young child; she gave her first public performance when she was 11. They lived in Poland when Ingrid was young, but settled in Austria in the late 1930s.
As a teenager she wrote poetry and was engaged in composing. But at the age of 19 she decided to concentrate entirely on piano – “I had to kill a lot of my interests,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia in 1964. She was educated at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in Austria and began earning awards in the early 1950s. at European piano competitions. In 1954, recordings she made for Vox with the Pro Musica Symphony of Vienna attracted attention in the United States.
“A delicate – but not fussy, to make the distinction – Mozart’s articulation that is unusual today is the way Ingrid Haebler plays the piano concertos in A major (K. 414) and Bb major (K. 595),” Cyrus Durgin, wrote a music critic for The Boston Globe in August 1954, while reviewing one of those records. “You will always see people (including musicians) defending or attacking this way, but it does meet Mozart’s requirement that his keyboard music ‘flow like oil and water’.”
That same year she performed as a soloist in England with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Mozart was her calling card, but she also proved an adept interpreter of other composers, as she did in 1956 when she played a program of Mozart, Haydn and Schubert at London’s Wigmore Hall. She “captivated and captivated her audience,” wrote The Daily Telegraph of Britain.
In 1958, reported The Bristol Evening Post, her stature was such that at the Bath Festival she felt free to reject the Steinway provided to her during the practice session and caused the organizers to look for another piano.
At that festival she also showed that she had more in her than just Mozart. She played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and impressed The Daily Telegraph of Britain. “Without ever evoking any spurious foresight of the Beethoven to come,” the paper wrote, “she placed the work in the 18th century, yet across the gulf that already separated him from Mozart.”
In October 1959 she made her American debut in Minneapolis with the Minneapolis Symphony, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B-flat.
“The cheers of the audience returned the pianist to the stage five times,” wrote Ross Parmenter in a review in The New York Times, “and the members of the orchestra joined in the applause.”
Mrs. Haebler, who was a baroness but did not use the title, was still impressing audiences with her Mozart interpretations in 1976, when she played her first New York recital at Hunter College, supplementing her program with works by Schubert and Debussy but shines as usual on the Mozart selections.
“This was unclouded, carefree Mozart,” wrote Donal Henahan in a review in The Times, “in keeping with the last century’s view of him as a wonderfully blessed child.”
Mrs. Haebler continued to tour into the early 1900s. On her numerous recordings, many of which for Philips, she covered a range of composers, but again it was often the Mozart recordings that stood out. Reviewing her 1990 recording of Mozart sonatas for The Kingston Whig-Standard of Ontario, critic Richard Perry focused on what made her refreshingly different.
“In a concert world filled with pianists of dazzling technique who seemed compelled by competition and cavernous concert halls to demonstrate their mettle at every turn,” he wrote, “Mrs. Haebler’s poise and simplicity of Mozart is a rare treat.”
Information on Mrs. Haebler’s survivors was not immediately available.
Christopher F. Schuetze reporting contributed.