Rudolf Buchbinder

Take a legendary pianist and one of the great violin virtuosos of our time, and the result is a guaranteed extraordinary musical experience. Rudolf Buchbinder and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider chose a cleverly coordinated programme for their matinee, beginning with the confidently simple, short sonata in D major D 384 by a 19-year-old Franz Schubert. With its heartfelt principal theme, Johannes Brahms’s Sonata in G major op. 78 from 1878 leads directly into his songlike, softly melancholic musical world. Working at great speed, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his greatest, concertante violin sonata in early 1803 for the British violinist George Bridgetower. But he later dedicated it – supposedly because of a falling-out between Beethoven and Bridgetower – to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, which is why it’s under the name «Kreutzer Sonata» that it remains sensationally popular to this day.