Rudolf Buchbinder Plays Brahms-Reger

I first became aware of pianist Rudolf Buchbinder back in the last years of the vinyl era. I remember purchasing one of his “complete works” collections but, for the life of me, I cannot remember the composer! His visits to San Francisco have been few and far between. Fortunately, his most recent appearance took place after I was well entrenched in my writing gig. My account of his performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 466 concerto in D minor with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) led by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) in October of 2016 made it clear that I was in hog heaven. Ironically, however, since my move from vinyl to CDs, he has been absent from my collection of recordings.

Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder on the cover of his new Song Transcriptions album (courtesy of Crossover Media)

This has now changed with the release of a new Deutsche Grammophon album entitled Song Transcriptions. There are 28 songs all by Johannes Brahms. The tracks are in chronological order, beginning with the first of the Opus 3 songs and concluding with the last in the Opus 107 set. All of the transcriptions were made by Max Reger.

I first became aware of these songs when Deutsche Grammophon released its “complete works” Brahms project as a series of vinyl albums according to category. The album of songs was my first purchase, since I knew so little of that side of the Brahms canon. Since then, I regret to say that almost all of my knowledge of those songs has come from recordings. Indeed, as far as my writing is concerned, I think that the only vocal selection I have heard in performance was the Opus 121 Vier ernste Gesänge (four serious songs) when Dashon Burton sang it for San Francisco Performances in February of 2022. This is probably the best known of Brahms’ song collections, and I was more than a little relieved by its absence from Song Transcriptions!

What is important about this new release is that Reger seems to have transcended Brahms’ compositions beyond a need for words. It goes without saying that, when a song has multiple stanzas, Reger only accounts for more than one of them when Brahms’ music eschews repetition. As a result, each track on the album presents a piece of music that is a solo piano composition in its own right. In some cases (such as the “Wiegenlied” war horse) the listener may be aware of the words that were set; but, in the overall context of the album, that selection is a rare exception.

In other words, this is a highly engaging album of 28 short pieces for solo piano. The “original source” may have been songs composed by Brahms. However, the “music as such” is Reger’s; and Buchbinder could not have done a better job in transforming what could have been a vocal recital into a solo piano recital.