Rudolf Buchbinder

Admired by fellow performers, acclaimed by critics, and revered by music lovers worldwide, Rudolf Buchbinder stands among the great pianists of our time. His interpretations flow from a unique fusion of spiritual insight and intellectual rigour, expressive spontaneity, and technical control, refined over the course of a career spanning more than sixty years. The irresistible power of his artistry continues to grow, reinforced by tireless study and a lifelong passion for the masterworks of piano literature. Rudolf Buchbinder was born in 1946 in Leitmeritz, a market town in Czechoslovakia. He made meteoric progress on his parents’ piano and, at the age of five, became the youngest student ever to be admitted to the Vienna Academy of Music; five years later, he performed for the Austrian Chancellor at the Musikverein. His reputation as an artist of the utmost integrity and discernment was soon enhanced with the release of the first of three complete recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Over the past half-century, he has performed with the world’s leading orchestras, worked with many of the finest conductors, and performed regularly as concerto soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist on five continents. He has been Artistic Director of the annual Grafenegg Festival, near Vienna, since its foundation in 2007, and has overseen its development as a major event in the classical music calendar. Buchbinder is an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and was the first soloist to be awarded the Goldene Ehrennadel by the Staatskapelle Dresden. Musical freedom lies at the heart of Buchbinder’s artistic creed. He has studied countless manuscript sources, early editions, and later revisions to gain a deep understanding of the expressive priorities valued most highly by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and their contemporaries, believing that the greater one’s knowledge of their work, the more spontaneous one can be in performance. Buchbinder opened the latest chapter in a long and distinguished career in 2019 when he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. While hailed for his recordings of the music of Haydn and Mozart, he is most closely associated with the keyboard works of Beethoven, having performed the composer’s complete cycle of 32 piano sonatas over 60 times, often on seven consecutive days. In 2020, he was presented with the Opus Klassik Lifetime Achievement Award, an honour that fittingly coincided with Beethoven’s 250th-anniversary year.