As befits a specialist in the music of Mozart and Schubert, Ingrid Haebler, who has died aged probably 96, was a native of Vienna. She made her debut as a child in Salzburg, going on to study at the Mozarteum there, as well as at the Vienna Music Academy. Indeed, the sensibility she brought to her playing of the classics, highlighting delicacy and charm, could be regarded as quintessentially Viennese.
Stanley Sadie’s entry in New Grove speaks of her “gentle and unassertive” style, as well as her “natural, Viennese feeling for a shapely line” and her “crystalline passage-work”. But her interpretations of Mozart, characterised by an elegance and stylishness that bordered on reverence, reflected an old-school view of the composer before Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus popularised a somewhat more earthy persona.
