As with one or two previous issues in this series, greatness is, to say the least, debatable here. Ingrid Haebler won her spurs as a fastidious exponent of the Viennese classical repertory, and during the 1960s was very much the Philips ‘house’ Mozart pianist, recording the complete piano concertos and most of the solo piano works. She was always admired for the grace and shapeliness of her phrasing, her pellucid cantabile touch and her crystalline articulation, all of which can be heard in the Mozart items on these discs. But her limitations are equally evident, above all in the Concerto, K456. By comparison with the likes of Schiff, Perahia and Brendel, Haebler’s is a small-scale, self-effacing reading, elegant and carefully proportioned but short on colour, drama and a sense of spontaneous discovery. In the G minor Andante the deliberate tempo and the frequent lingering ritardandos have a slightly enervating effect, while the 6/8 finale, for all the neatness of Haebler’s passagework, is a very muted affair, with barely a hint of roguishness or, in the central B minor episode, passion. Under Sir Colin Davis a slimmish-sounding LSO provides nicely pointed accompaniments, though Davis must take some of the responsibility for the faint air of lethargy in the Andante.
The Sonata, K576, receives a similar performance – lucid, refined, invariably pleasing on the ear (nothing Haebler does is ever harsh or graceless), but ultimately rather lightweight: the sinewy contrapuntal writing of the outer movements, in particular, is too soft-grained, with Haebler reluctant to give the left hand its due and to sustain a true forte for more than a bar or two. Neither of the Haydn items offers much more than good taste: the Hungarian rondo of the D major Concerto is delicate and decorous to a fault, with barely a whiff of the puszta; and the F minor Variations, criminally shorn of repeats, is brisk and rhythmically inflexible, leaving me – in this, of all Haydn’s works – quite uninvolved.
In the Bach Sixth French Suite, Haebler’s fine-drawn cantabile line and clarity of articulation give pleasure, though she can slightly prettify the music (the Minuet, with its exquisitely tapered phrase endings, and the Gavotte suffer most here), while her tendency to subdue the left hand sometimes compromises the music’s polyphonic strength. I enjoyed the Schumann Kinderszenen with fewer reservations. Other pianists may have brought more fantasy and tonal variety to these miniatures, but Haebler’s simplicity, delicacy and sensitive balancing of texture are certainly appealing. As for the Schubert A minor Sonata, Haebler identifies closely with the music’s pathos and inwardness, though she underestimates the elements of terror in the first movement (taming, for instance, those cataclysmic fortissimo chords) and of eerie disquiet in the finale, here taken gently, almost assuagingly.
Other listeners may respond to these thoughtful, modest performances with more consistent enthusiasm than I did. Certainly, the finish of Haebler’s pianism is, within its well-regulated limits, not in doubt. But could anyone – except the writer of the pretentious booklet-note, who evidently ranks Haebler alongside Glenn Gould – seriously claim that she is one of the century’s great pianists? Sound quality is acceptable to good, though the earliest item, the Schumann Kinderszenen, suffers from occasional distortion, and the strings in the Haydn D major Concerto have a distinctly scrawny edge.'