Biography

For more than fifty years Rudolf Buchbinder has appeared in concert all over the world with renowned orchestras and conductors. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in December 2016, he will be celebrated in such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Berlin Philharmonie. Among the highlights of this anniversary season are tours with the Vienna Philharmonic under the batons of Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst and with the Staatskapelle Dresden, as well as concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic led by Christian Thielemann. By invitation of Mariss Jansons, Mr. Buchbinder is Artist-in-Residence with the Bavarian Radio Symphony. He is also featured in concerts at the Musikverein in Vienna. Mr. Buchbinder’s repertory spans from Bach to contemporary music. He has documented this broad artistic range in more than 100 recordings, many of which have won awards. With his performances of the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas, he has contributed to the development of the performance history of these works across several decades. He has performed this cycle more than fifty times in cities such as Berlin, Buenos Aires, Dresden, Milan, Beijing, Saint Petersburg, Zurich, and four times in Vienna as well as in Munich, respectively. In 2014, he became the first pianist to perform all the Beethoven sonatas within one summer season at the Salzburg Festival. The Salzburg cycle was recorded live for release on DVD.

Mr. Buchbinder’s latest CD release is a recording of Mozart piano concertos with Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, which he directs from the piano. Autumn 2016 sees the release on DVD and CD of a live recording of Brahms’s two piano concertos with the Vienna Phil harmonic and Zubin Mehta. An avid collector of historic scores, Mr. Buchbinder owns thirty-nine complete editions of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas. His library also contains an extensive collection of first prints, original editions, and copies of Brahms’s two original piano concerto scores. Mr. Buchbinder has been the Artistic Director of the Grafenegg Festival since 2007. Under his leadership, it has developed into one of Europe’s foremost festivals for orchestral music. Mr. Buchbinder has published two books so far: his autobiography Da Capo, as well as My Beethoven—Life with the Master. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1985.

(October 2016)