Review: Tonhalle with Jaap van Zweden and Rudolf Buchbinder

We gave two beautiful concerts at Tonhalle Zurich on April 10-11, under the baton of Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden and with the famous Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder.

Buchbinder's mastery, especially in the classical period repertoire, is known to everyone. Performing the works of this period requires a high level of artistic finesse and narrative skill, as well as virtuosity. Buchbinder gave a great performance in this sense with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor (KV 491). In my opinion, no matter what instrument we play, Buchbinder's pure interpretation and artistic modesty should be an example for all of us in this sense when studying works from the classical and early romantic eras.

Buchbinder also enchanted everyone with two different encores he played in each concert: in one by Schubert (unfortunately, I couldn't remember the name of the piece) and in the second, while he displayed his virtuosity and immaculate workmanship in the last movement of Beethoven's 17th Piano Sonata (“Sturmsonate”), it was as if he felt subchallenged in the Mozart and wanted to "compensate" for this with the encores he made. Even though he was 78 years old, the man did not shed a single drop of sweat after he finished playing.

I played with Buchbinder for the first time, when I was at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker from 2016-2018. He had performed three different encores at the end of the three concerts we played there. It is obvious how much he cares about the kind of artist he wants to be remembered as in the years to come, from how much he pays attention to such details.

The concert was opened with the prelude of Wagner's opera "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" conducted by van Zweden. In the second half, we performed Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (Sz. 116).