by Mike Telin

This week at Severance Hall, Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus & Children’s Chorus in concerts featuring Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen’s Return (Legends) Wigglesworth’s Locke’s Theatre and Britten’s Spring Symphony. Soloists include Kate Royal, soprano, Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano and John Tessier, tenor.

The concerts also include Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and mark the return of famed Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder to Severance Hall for the first time since 1998. We spoke to the fascinating pianist by telephone at his home in Vienna.

We talked about a few of his hobbies like collecting movie DVDs and scores of Beethoven, and his recent release of the five Beethoven concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic on DVD/Blu-ray as well as his secret to a well balanced life. We began by asking him why he thinks Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody is so wildly popular?

Rudolf Buchbinder: First of all for me, this piece is one of the greatest variation compositions. You have the Goldberg, the Diabelli, and Paganini by Rachmaninoff. It’s a really great piece. It was one of the first piano concertos I studied at age 14 and the amazing thing is all of the Russian conductors that I work with all want to play Rachmaninoff with me. Not Beethoven or Brahms. [Read more…]