Beethoven Piano Sonatas Buchbinder

Rudolf Buchbinder is one of the legendary artists of our time. His piano playing is an unparalleled fusion of the authority of a career spanning more than 60 years with spirit and spontaneity. Few musicians have engaged with Beethoven's music as intensively and over such a long period as legendary Austrian Maestro Rudolf Buchbinder. He has performed the 32 piano sonatas 60 times in cycles all over the world and developed the story of their interpretation over decades. At the Salzburger Festspiele in 2014 he was the first pianist ever playing all 32 Sonatas on several recitals in one festival season.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas form an unparalleled canon, remaining one of the greatest and most rewarding challenges for pianists to this day. These three sonatas represent Beethoven’s Early, Middle and Late periods but are united in the key of C – minor, for the dramatic and stormy intensity of mood in the Pathétique, and major for the radiant and poetic Waldstein sonata. In his sonata Op. 111 the cycle is completed with music of utmost dramatic tension and the deepest spirituality.

Rudolf Buchbinder (born 1 December 1946, Litoměřice, Czechoslovakia) is an Austrian classical pianist.

Rudolf Buchbinder (born 1 December 1946, Litoměřice, Czechoslovakia) is an Austrian classical pianist.

Rudolf Buchbinder (born 1 December 1946, Litoměřice, Czechoslovakia) is an Austrian classical pianist.

Rudolf Buchbinder (born 1 December 1946, Litoměřice, Czechoslovakia) is an Austrian classical pianist.

Following on from his recent debut album for DG focused around Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, the celebrated pianist and renowned Beethoven specialist Rudolf Buchbinder rejoins the celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary that come to a climax with a breath-taking live performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with his long-time friend Christian Thielemann conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder is an important specialist in core Austro-Germanic repertory, bringing precision and taste to music from Haydn to Brahms. He was a pioneering champion of Haydn's keyboard music, recording that composer's complete piano sonatas in the 1970s. Buchbinder was born in Litomerice, Czechoslovakia, on December 1, 1946, as the region's ethnically German inhabitants were being expelled by order of the Czech government. He grew up in Austria and attended the Vienna Academy of Music, where he studied with Bruno Seidlhofer. Something of a prodigy, Buchbinder took a piano trio prize at the Munich International Festival in 1961 and earned a Dinu Lipatti Medal the following year.

Rudolf Buchbinder (born 1 December 1946, Litoměřice, Czechoslovakia) is an Austrian classical pianist.