Käbi Laretei was born in Tallinn and arrived
in Sweden during the Second World War where she has held an honoured
place in musical life ever since. A pupil of Edwin Fischer she
has a wide repertoire and an innovative approach to concert giving,
which includes spoken introductions. She was long the musical
muse of Ingmar Bergman, whose wife she was until their divorce.
I mention the Bergman connection because she does so in her liner
notes, which provide an intriguing insight into the processes
of creativity and perception; how musicians are stimulated, informed
and changed by those, not necessarily musical, around them. It
was Bergman who suggested she study the Mozart Fantasia, a piece
she didn’t know for his film Face to Face as he suggested
she study the harpsichord to learn some Scarlatti for The Devil’s
Eye. Of the Bergman inspired pieces here perhaps the best
known, from a cinematic point of view, is Autumn Sonata - she
reprises the Prelude in A minor in this disc – all recorded over
twenty-five years ago now, between 1977-78.
But the disc’s actual animating raison d’être
is not Bergman but Nightfall – the crepuscular intimacies and
fears of dusk. It makes for an interesting programme though, as
she points out, to achieve consistency she would have preferred
the Moonlight to the Tempest. However I have to
say that I find that the companion Proprius disc by her – also
reviewed by me - far preferable to this
one. I don’t much like the sound of the piano, or the recorded
sound and much of her playing here is vitiated by a retardation
of rhythm and a rather inert approach generally. I did find the
A minor prelude idiosyncratic and novel and she vests a suitable
bleakness in the Grieg but comparison, for example, between her
Scarlatti F major sonata and the lucid and charming mid 1950s
recording by Marcelle Meyer shows what is missing here.
Jonathan Woolf
Käbi
Laretei (piano)