Rudolf Buchbinder

He is the founder and artistic director of the International Music Festival in Grafenegg Castle since 2007. He was awarded the Echo Klassik award for Instrumentalist of the Year in 2012 and became an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic in 2016.

Rudolf Buchbinder studied at University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The recorded working language is German. Distinctions recorded are Grand Officer, Special Class of the Order of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, Golden Medal for Merit to Culture, Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the State of Vienna and Great Golden Medal of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Buchbinder was born in Litoměřice (German: Leitmeritz), a town in northern Bohemia, then part of postwar Czechoslovakia, in 1946. His mother was from Vienna and had traveled there to settle paperwork after the death of her first husband, who was from Leitmeritz. They returned to Vienna in 1947, and he lived with his mother, grandmother, and half-brother Klaus in a small apartment in Vienna's 7th district. He began his formal musical training with Bruno Seidlhofer at the Vienna Academy of Music. In 1965, he made a tour of North and South Americas. The following year, he won a special prize awarded at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Subsequently he has toured with the Vienna Philharmonic and appeared as soloist around the world. He has also taught piano at the Basel Academy of Music. For the Teldec label he has recorded the complete keyboard music of Haydn, all Mozart's major works for piano, all the Beethoven piano sonatas and variations, and both Brahms piano concertos with Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. With János Starker, he recorded memorable performances of works for cello and piano by Beethoven and Brahms. He has twice recorded the Beethoven piano concertos conducting from the keyboard, first with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra for the Preiser label in 2007, and then with the Vienna Philharmonic for the Sony label in 2011; this cycle was recorded live in concert and released on both CD and DVD. He is one of the few pianists to have ever recorded the entire Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, which consists of 50 variations by 50 different composers on a waltz by Anton Diabelli. He has also recorded Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, which originally comprised Part I of that anthology. Buchbinder is a life-long interpreter of Mozart's piano concertos and sonatas, usually conducting them from the keyboard. This shows that Mozart's music is at the heart of his repertoire. Since 2007, Buchbinder has been the artistic director of the Grafenegg Festival. In 2009, Buchbinder was featured in the award-winning German-Austrian documentary Pianomania, about a Steinway & Sons piano tuner, which was directed by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis. The film premiered theatrically in North America, where it was met with positive reviews by The New York Times, as well as in Asia and throughout Europe, and is a part of the Goethe-Institut catalogue.

1961: First Prize at the International Competition in Munich, division "Piano Trio" 1962: Lipatti Medal 1966: Special prize awarded at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition 1970: Mozart Interpretation Prize of the Austrian Minister for Education and the Arts 1977: Grand Prix du Disque for the entire piano works of Joseph Haydn 1989: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art 1992: Honorary Member of the Vienna Symphony 1994: Honorary Member of the Carinthian Summer 1995: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class 1996: Great Merit of the Province of Salzburg 1996: Grand Gold Decoration of Carinthia 1996: Bruckner Ring of the Vienna Symphony 1996: Gold Medal for services to the City of Vienna 1999: Grand Gold Decoration of Lower Austria 2003: Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria 2004: Gold Medal of Salzburg 2007: Gold Medal of the Austrian capital Vienna 2008: Honorary Member of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna 2010: Tourism Award of the State of Lower Austria for his work in music tourism in Grafenegg 2011: Gloria Artis, Medal for Merit to Culture 2012: Echo Klassik in German music award as Instrumentalist of the Year (piano) and the album Beethoven: The Sonata Legacy issued by RCA Red Seal/Sony 2016: Honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic 2017: Vienna Mozart Prize