Diabelli's Waltz Variations – Rudolf Buchbinder

It's not as if recordings of the 62 Piano Sonatas of Franz Josef Haydn are thick on the ground. Among the relative big names, there's Jeno Jando on Naxos and John McCabe on Decca. Among the less well-known names, there's Walid Akl on Koch Discover, Roland Batik on Camerata, Ronald Brautigam on BIS, Walter Olbertz on Berlin Classics, and Christine Schornsheim on Capriccio. And for those listeners with record players and aging memories, there's also the venerable Hungaroton cycle, the first complete recorded cycle, that coupled relatively well-known Hungarians like Zoltán Kocsis and Dezsö Ránki with nearly unknown Hungarians like János Sebestyén and the inimitable Zsuzsa Pertis.

Celebrated pianist and renowned Beethoven specialist Rudolf Buchbinder releases his second album with Deutsche Grammophon following his exclusive contract with the label in 2019. The album captures a breath taking live performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1. from 2016 between Buchbinder, his long time friend Christian Thielemann , and the Berlin Philharmonics. This does not only represent the first DG release with Christian Thielemann and the Berlin Philharmonics but also celebrates Beethoven’s 250th anniversary this year. The album is completed with Beethoven’s six variations for piano op. 34 recorded in August 2019, which is also when Buchbinder recorded his successful Diabelli Variations.

Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder’s latest album, Soirée de Vienne, features music by Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Strauss and celebrates his home city. The recording captures both the lost world of salon soirées and Vienna’s legendary attitude to life, with its heady blend of intensity and insouciance, earthiness and beauty.

Rudolf Buchbinder, the doyen of Austrian pianists, plays Max Reger’s rarely heard, lovingly crafted transcriptions of his idol Johannes Brahms’s most beautiful lieder, about which Reger said: “In the case of such masterpieces, any embellishment and any attempt to introduce a note of brilliance would be an unheard-of act of vandalism. I mean to adopt a different approach by bringing out the vocal line and, where possible, retaining the original accompaniment in the most faithful way that I can!”

Few musical partnerships have elicited such divergent critical opinions as Maurizio Pollini and Claudio Abbado in Brahms’s two piano concertos. Reviewing the First Concerto in April 1999, Richard Osborne found ‘a lack of quickness and intelligence in the inner-part playing’ while missing ‘any real sense of interaction between soloist and orchestra’. A year earlier Bryce Morrison, in his review of the Second Concerto, had found it ‘impossible to think of them apart, their unity [here] is so indissoluble’. BM also praised what he heard as ‘a granitic reading stripped of all surplus gesture, preening mannerism or overt display, intent only on the unveiling of a musical or moral truth’.

Few musicians have engaged with Beethoven’s music as intensively and over such a long period as the Austrian Maestro Rudolf Buchbinder. In performing the 32 piano sonatas as full cycles countless times all over the world, he has developed his interpretation over decades. This edition is the complete cycle recorded over several recital concerts at the 2014 Salzburg Festival, where he has been the first pianist ever to accomplished this feat.

Rudolf Buchbinder is firmly established as one of the world's foremost pianists and is frequently invited by major orchestras and festivals around the world. His comprehensive repertoire encompasses numerous 20th century compositions and has been a recording artist for over four decades now resulting in a vast catalogue of more than 200 releases. Amongst them, Sonys release of the entire 32 piano sonatas by Beethoven, which was awarded the prestigious ECHO Klassik prize. Buchbinder is lauded over and again for his state of the art interpretations of the piano milestones by Beethoven and Brahms. Now, for the first time in his recording career, Rudolf Buchbinder tackles the third of classical musics Three Bs Johann Sebastian Bach.