Complete Piano Sonatas: Buchbinder

Joseph Haydn:
Complete Piano Sonatas

based on the Wiener-Urtext-Ausgabe edited by Christa Landon

Sonatas Nos. 1 to 62
Unnumbered Sonatas and Variations

Rudolf Buchbinder, piano

It was in Haydn's hands that the keyboard sonata developed from a simple drawing-room divertimento to the level of a high art-form and the greatest among his sonatas have an intellectual rigour and a dramatic sweep that were rarely equalled by Mozart, and not surpassed until Beethoven revolutionized the form in the closing years of the eighteenth century.

His earliest sonatas were composed with the harpsichord in mind, but in later years he began increasingly to exploit dynamic contrasts of a kind that could only be obtained on the fortepiano.

A seasoned interpreter of standard repertoire as well as numerous 20th century compositions, Rudolf Buchbinder, was the youngest student ever to be admitted to the Vienna Musik Hochschule. He was five years old. It was then that he began his comprehensive musical career as chamber musician.