Ruth Laredo, Pianist Who Recorded Rachmaninoff, Dies at 67
NY Times
Ruth Laredo, a pianist equally at home in chamber music and solo works who was known for landmark recordings of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, died on Wednesday at her apartment in New York. She was 67. Ms. Laredo, who played her last concert on May 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had cancer and died in her sleep, said her manager, James Murtha.
The concert was one of a series she had given for 17 years at the Met called “Concerts With Commentary,” in which Ms. Laredo played and spoke engagingly about music. The series had become an important part of the New York concert scene, where she was a frequent presence.
Just two days after the attack on the World Trade Center, Ms. Laredo celebrated the 25th anniversary of her Alice Tully Hall debut with a recital there. It was the opening concert of the 2001 Lincoln Center season, and Ms. Laredo addressed the audience beforehand, saying: “It was important for me to play. Great music gives us spiritual sustenance and gives us hope. It is in that spirit that I play tonight.”
Ms. Laredo was a pianist in the Romantic mold, a dynamic performer concerned with texture and color. In recent years, Mr. Murtha said, her career as a soloist with orchestras had waned, but she was comfortable with a mix of recitals, chamber concerts and accompanying duties.
When she was first on the rise, in the 1970’s, Ms. Laredo was a relative rarity as a female piano soloist, particularly in the technically demanding and muscular works of Rachmaninoff. There were only a few others - Gina Bachauer, Myra Hess and later Alicia de Larrocha, for example.
“Every time we did interviews in those early days, she was asked how does it feel to be a woman pianist,” Mr. Murtha said. “She wanted to be a pianist, period.”
