Estonian pianist of sound renown

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Estonian pianist of sound renown

Kabi Laretei was an international concert pianist and the fourth wife of Ingmar Bergman, some of whose films she can be heard in.

Kabi Laretei was an international concert pianist and the fourth wife of Ingmar Bergman, some of whose films she can be heard in.

She introduced the Swedish film director to a wide range of classical music and taught him how music is rehearsed and prepared, and how an artist approaches her performance. He in turn dedicated to her Through a Glass Darkly (1961), which features the music of Bach.

They married in 1959, and she was arguably the only woman in his life to be his intellectual and artistic equal. Despite their busy schedules she always sought openness and honesty from her husband, a challenge to which, according to Swedish Book Review, "Bergman at first responded eagerly but ultimately failed to rise".

Within a few years Laretei had discovered that music was the only thing they had in common. "I wanted to bring the musicians back home after a concert, I had been doing in my previous marriage, but he hated that - no improvisation, no spontaneousness," she said.

Bergman was also jealous, accusing her of infidelities while she was overseas, while he was frequently unfaithful back home. They soon separated.

Shortly after Bergman's death in 2007, some 260 letters written by Laretei in the early days of their romance were found in a briefcase at the back of his wardrobe. She published them in Vart tog all denna kärlek vägen? ("Where did all the love go?"), adding her own private diary from that time. According to one review, they show a woman "striving for a spiritual union to match the physical one".

Kabi Alma Laretei was born in Tartu, Estonia, on July 14, 1922, and showed early musical promise. Her father, Heinrich Laretei, was a diplomat and the family moved often: the only place she could call home was her grandparents' house at Nomme, south of Talinn. Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, and she was raped and had an illegal abortion. Eventually the family escaped to Stockholm. Heinrich, who refused to recognise the occupation, was sentenced to death in absentia as a traitor.

Denied a place at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music because she was not a Swedish citizen, Laretei studied privately with Annie Fischer and Maria-Luisa Strub-Moresco. During the 1950s her concert career blossomed. In her British debut, at the Wigmore Hall in 1952, her recital of Beethoven and Bartok was, said one critic, "splendidly secure and intelligently thought out in every detail". She was heard there occasionally until 1975.

Laretei, who in 1950 had married the German conductor Gunnar Staern, became close to Bergman when he was married to the writer Gun Grut, and while he was musing on a plan to take a year-long sabbatical studying JS Bach. The idea never came to fruition, but by 1959 they had left their respective partners.

For a while their creative sparks fired each other. She was also moving in exalted circles, for example rehearsing Stravinsky's Capriccio with the composer and performing it at the 1963 Stockholm Festival. She was also coached by Hindemith for a recording of Ludus Tonalis, his fiendish set of 12 fugues in as many keys, which was released in 1966.

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In 1963 Bergman was appointed head of the Dramaten theatre in Stockholm. Laretei predicted that this new interest would end their marriage. Indeed, as early as 1962 she had written in her diary: "Is something broken between Immi and me?"

After separating, they continued to collaborate, including on Autumn Sonata (1978), in which Charlotte (played by Ingrid Bergman ) gives a piano lesson to her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) and they both play the Chopin Prelude No 2 in A minor. Laretei coached both actor and recorded the work for both teacher and student, later telling how she had struggled to play it badly for Eva.

During the 1960s Laretei was often heard in the United States, including at Carnegie Hall. In 1968 she gave a Christmas concert at the White House for African-American children, which she enriched by placing a wind-chime with soft white-feathered birds under the open lid of the piano for Grieg's Small Bird.

Thanks to her international upbringing, Laretei spoke at least six languages fluently, answering the telephone in a different one every time it rang. She wrote several volumes of memoirs, starting with As in Translation (2004), which picks over the turbulent early years with Bergman. In Tones and Passions (2010) she describes life as a performing artist, what one reviewer called "meetings with hypersensitive conductors and eccentric colleagues, the endless moment behind the stage door before entry, the various personalities of concert grands, relations to friends and lovers".

Käbi Laretei and Bergman divorced in 1969, by which time the director and Liv Ullman had a daughter. Nevertheless, Laretei spent many summers with Bergman at his house on Faro island, writing and playing the piano.

She is survived by their son, Daniel, also a director, and a daughter of her first marriage.

Telegraph, London

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