INTERVIEW 'Beethoven is in my soul, body, and heart'
Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. Courtesy of VINCERO
Austria's renowned pianist Rudolf Buchbinder talks about his life-long love for Beethoven
By Anna J. Park
Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, 72, is a legendary Beethoven specialist, who has performed Ludwig van Beethoven's complete 32 piano sonata cycles more than 50 times in over 30 cities, including Munich, Vienna, Zurich and Buenos Aires, over the course of his more than sixty-year music career. He is also the first pianist who played all Beethoven's piano sonatas at the Salzburg Festival in 2014, which was recorded as a live DVD.
2020 will mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth and in light of the occasion, the renowned pianist is giving recitals of some of the most popular Beethoven sonatas in his 2019/20 season, including Korea as one of the destinations.
Since early May, he has toured the cities of Daegu and Gwangju, and his two remaining recitals in Korea during this visit will be held at the Arts Center Incheon on Saturday and at the Seoul Arts Center on Sunday. He will play Beethoven sonata No. 10, 13, 25, as well as No. 8, widely known as “Pathetique,” and No. 23 or “Appassionata.”
In a recent email interview with The Korea Times, Buchbinder said his life-long love for Beethoven's piano works has become the center of his life.
“Now Beethoven is in my soul, body, and heart. So, I can play his music whenever and wherever I want without preparing actually. There is no question that Beethoven is the center of my repertoire and my life. I just knew that Beethoven would be the center of everything in me when I first met him.”
The pianist added, after more than sixty years of playing Beethoven, he still discovers something new in his music.
“Beethoven's personality has fascinated me since my childhood. Of course, I play all the other composers' music as well, but Beethoven is a special character and human being. A true revolutionary in classical music history. You will always discover something new in Beethoven's music, as long as you live,” he said.
Buchbinder is also an ardent collector of complete editions of Beethoven's sonata works and other original documents. He currently has 39 complete editions, including the Franz Liszt edition, which Liszt himself completed Beethoven's all 32 piano sonatas by 1857. Buchbinder said his collection of editions helps him to research deeper into Beethoven's musicality and true artistry.
“Liszt was one of the leading composers and pianists of the time, and Liszt is pretty much the only 'editor' to put Beethoven's original fingerings. Not his own creation. And I strongly think it's important that we don't have any besides Beethoven's, because each pianist should come up with their own, hopefully based on Beethoven's original fingerings,” he said.
The Beethoven expert is also the Artistic Director of the Grafenegg Festival, one of Austria's representative international music festivals, since its foundation in 2007. This year's installment will kick off in mid-August.
“Grafenegg is mainly for orchestras, so we have the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariinsky orchestra, the city of Birmingham Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic this year. Decent orchestras from all of the world come to Grafenegg to play fantastic concerts in our amazing auditorium. Fantastic audience and the concert hall in Grafenegg are the strong points of the festival,”
The 72-year-old pianist has also started a new project with the Deutsche Grammophon label. His new album at the prestigious music label, set to be released in March 2020, will include 11 new compositions on the theme of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Eleven contemporary composers, including Krzysztof Penderecki, Rodion Shchedrin and Brett Dean, have been commissioned for the project, marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth next year.
“It's never finished. You always want something new,” he said.