Sad news – Ingrid Haebler has died aged 93. Her Philips recording of Mozart’s C-major Piano Concerto (No.21; K467) with the LSO & Witold Rowicki.
May 15, 2023 | News, Videos | 6 comments

6 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
An important artist in the gramophone history of Mozart piano concertos. British critics weren’t always kind, using words like ‘prim’, and berating her for resisting any ornamentation at cadential/cadenza points. ‘That is what the master wrote and that is what I shall play’, was one caricaturing comment I remember in a Gramophone review of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Well, fair comment perhaps. But listening to that K467 you’ve just posted, Col, I find that there’s something refreshing beside some of the narcissistic over-egging we sometimes encounter nowadays, and the boldly-played little cadenza with which she introduces the first solo in the K467 finale catapults any suspicion of primness firmly out of the window!
Very much agree Andrew: the world was not kind to her. She came to Buffalo – NY and I went to listen to her at Fisher-Avery Hall the ONE time she was invited, in 1995. Tried to get her back but she was not ‘sexy’ enough for American audiences. Great loss
This is indeed sad news – a very fine artist, and consistently so. I always felt her Mozart was what Mozart should sound like – not the kind of Mozart you hear post-Amadeus today – assuming London orchestras still programme Mozart piano concertos.
I met Ingrid in Buenos Aires in the early 70s. She was kind, she was generous and she played with a fierce love of what the composer had written. It was simple, it was refreshing, it was perfect! In a world in which extra and speed are king, she was the queen of elegance. We stayed friends although after the death of her brother last year she withdrew. I will miss her! I would LOVE to find a buyable ‘all the Mozart concertos’ because nobody plays them like she does. A very big loss to our world: a shinning star is extinguished.
Hello
I am an obituarist at The Times and it would be great to chat to Ingrid’s friends/family for a piece I’m writing about her. If you are interested please do pop me an email, it would be lovely to speak to you about her.
All the best
Georgia
Hello Georgia…I’ve only just noticed your posting on Colin’s column after reading your obituary in today’s Times and your direct quoting of my own post! Glad to have been of service! A nice obituary, but Haebler didn’t record Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, least of all in the Albert Hall! Surely this was a concert. Maybe some careless sub-editing here?