In the course of his long and brilliant career, Rudolf Buchbinder's name has become indissociable from that of Ludwig van Beethoven and his repertoire of Sonatas, Variations and Piano Concertos. The Austrian pianist has performed the entire cycle of Beethoven's Sonatas more than 50 times worldwide. His last series of concerts recorded for Deutsche Grammophone at the Musikverein involved five orchestras and as many conductors of the calibre of Mariss Jansons (with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), Andris Nelsons (and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra), as well as Valery Gergiev, Christian Thielemann and Riccardo Muti.

"Beethoven was the most romantic of composers," Buchbinder told The Guardian in an interview. "When Beethoven wrote expressive - which he did very often - he meant something deeply emotional, something extreme, something that would stop time as we know it."

Study is the basis of his great freedom of interpretation. It is through original sources that one discovers, for example, that Beethoven often changed the tempo when performing the slow movement of the Sonata Op. 90. According to Buchbinder, there was more room for imagination, eccentricity, and personality to emerge in Beethoven's time. A space that Buchbinder allows himself in each performance.