Infinite Crescendo

I met Viennese pianist Rudolf Buchbinder one recent evening in his dressing room at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, where he was performing his “Diabelli Project” program: variations on the short and somewhat banal waltz by contemporary composers (Jörg Widmann, Lera Auerbach, Max Richter, Toshio Hosokawa) and historical musicians (Liszt, Czerny, Schubert) in the first half; in the second, Beethoven’s momentous “Diabelli Variations.” Buchbinder, who turns 75 at the beginning of next month and wore a white button-down shirt monogrammed with his own initials, spoke in slow, thoughtful sentences, his pleasantly old-fashioned style tempered by his wish “to be every bit the rapscallion at 85 as I was at 15.”