Ruth Laredo - Education

Education

Ruth Laredo's mother Miriam Meckler, a piano teacher mainly for children, taught Ruth first. When the time came for more formal training in 1947, she sent her to Edward Bredshall. Bredshall had studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and was known for his effective methods of teaching. She studied with him four years, and he introduced her to the music of other Russian composers, notably Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Kabalevsky.

Her preference for Russian music led her to team up with a Russian émigré, Mischa Kottler, who also was the teacher of the pianist and singer Muriel Elizabeth Charbonneau and later of the saxophonist and composer Rick Margitza and the jazz pianist Ray Cooke.

From 1951 to 1955 Laredo attended Mumford High School in Detroit. During summer vacations she enjoyed the Indian Hill Summer Workshops in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. After her graduation in 1955 she began her studies with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She had been introduced to Serkin in 1954 by the violinist Berl Senofsky and the pianist Seymour Lipkin, both of whom she knew from the summer camps. Serkin told her at her audition in Marlboro, Vermont: “I can see that you play like a tiger!” He accepted her as one of only four students.

Rudolf Serkin, a student of Arnold Schoenberg and himself an artist of worldwide reputation, was known for his complete dedication to the music, and his fidelity to the composer. At first, he took a dim view of Laredo's passion for the music of Russian composers; his tastes ran to the Mozart-Beethoven-Schubert-Brahms line of Central European composers. Despite this, Ruth Laredo would become known later for her Scriabin and Rachmaninoff recordings and performances.

Ruth Laredo spent many summers at the Marlboro Music School and Festival near Brattleboro, Vermont, which had been founded in 1950 by Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch (then called School of Music). There she continued her studies with Serkin and was coached in chamber music by the cellist Pablo Casals. Fellow students included Murray Perahia, Richard Goode (currently artistic director of the festival, together with Mitsuko Uchida), Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma. At the end of each festival season, the traditional closing work was Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, Op. 80 with Rudolf Serkin as soloist and the entire Marlboro community in the chorus.

Ruth Laredo graduated in 1960 with a diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Her graduation took place on a celebration of the fiftieth birthday of the American composer Samuel Barber. By coincidence she had prepared his Sonata in E-flat minor, Op. 26 for her graduation recital, and so became part of the celebration. Barber was in the audience and came back to her after the concert, very warmly congratulated her, and wrote on her copy of the Sonata: “Brava, bravissima.”