Classical pianist Ingrid Haebler was born in Vienna, Austria on June 20, 1929. Her family moved to Poland when she was three years old and then relocated to Salzburg, Austria after the outbreak of World War II. She began studying the piano with her mother before attending the Vienna Music Academy, the Salzburg Mozarteum (where she won the Lilli-Lehmann medal in 1949), and at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, before studying privately in Paris, France with Marguerite Long. Ingrid Haebler won second prize at the Schubert Competition in 1952 and 1953 as well as another prize in Munich, Germany in 1954. She then began to perform concerts all over the world including acclaimed performances at the Salzburg Festival. Ingrid Haebler was one of the first Austrian musicians to experiment with period instruments and has recorded all of Mozart’s piano concertos and all of Schubert’s sonatas. She is known for a recording career that began on the Vox label with albums such as Mozart: Concertos pour piano No. 15 & 18 (1953) and Mozart: Concertos pour piano Nos. 12 & 27 (1954). Switching to the Phillips label, she continued her acclaimed career with Schubert: Impromptus Op. 90 & 142 (1964), Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 12, 18 & 19 (1965), Schubert: Piano Sonatas Nos. 13 & 18 (1966), Schumann: Papillons, Kinderszenen, Piano Concerto; Franck: Variations symphoniques (1967), and Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 26 (1968). Beginning in 1969, she took a teaching position at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Her acclaimed recording career continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s and her work began to be compiled on a series of compilations and box sets including the 10 CD set Mozart: Complete Piano Concertos (1996), the five-disc Mozart: Complete Piano Sonatas (2003), the seven CD Schubert (2013) and the massive 58 disc The Philips Legacy (2022). Shortly after the release of the collection Mozart Piano Sonatas & Other Works (2023), Ingrid Haebler died at the age of 93 on May 14, 2023.
