Rudolf Buchbinder performs and conducts Haydn, Beethoven, and Schumann

A few months shy of his 80th birthday, legendary Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder remains firmly at his artistic peak, with his 2026 Schubert double album enjoying several months (and counting, at the time of writing) in the #1 spot of Apple Classical's Top 100. In this bravura performance as both soloist and conductor with the excellent Würth Philharmoniker, he brings his trademark "seasoned mastery and genuine affection" (Gramophone) to a triptych of favorite concertos. Haydn's Keyboard Concerto in D, Hob. XVIII:11 (1783), the composer's final and most popular concerto, pairs perfectly with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C, composed just over a decade later: these bright, effervescent works bear quasi-Mozartean flourishes and conclude with a lively and irrepressible rondo. After the double dose of Classical elegance, Buchbinder and the Würth Philharmoniker go Romantic with one of the greatest and most poetic works of the entire 19th century, Robert Schumann's lone Piano Concerto in A minor, which unfurls its sweepingly emotional melodies like a law of nature across three uninterrupted movements.