Ruth Laredo dies at 67.

Ruth Laredo, a pianist known for her recordings of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, died May 25 at her apartment in New York. She was 67.

Laredo played her last concert on May 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of a series she had given for 17 years at the Met called "Concerts With Commentary," in which Laredo played and spoke about music. The series had become an important part of the New York concert scene, where she was a frequent presence.

When she was first on the rise, in the 1970s, 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.

Born Ruth Meckler in Detroit on November 20, 1937, she attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Rudolf Serkin. She graduated in 1960 and that same year married the violinist Jaime Laredo, with whom she collaborated musically. They later divorced.

Laredo made her debut with an orchestra in 1962, in a program led by Leopold Stokowski conducting the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Pierre Boulez, 12 years later. Her Carnegie Hall solo recital debut came only in 1981.

At Curtis, Serkin schooled Laredo in the basics of Mozart and Beethoven, turning a disapproving eye on her youthful love for Rachmaninoff, but it was with his music, as well as that of his fellow Russian, Scriabin, that Laredo made her mark.

In the 1970s Laredo recorded two pioneering and acclaimed sets: the entire Scriabin piano sonatas, for the now-defunct Connoisseur label, and the complete solo repertory of Rachmaninoff, on seven LPs for CBS Masterworks.

Laredo is survived by her daughter, Jennifer Laredo, who lives in London with her husband, cellist Paul Watkins and by a granddaughter.