Sara Davis Buechner has been celebrated as a pianist of noteworthy accomplishment, virtuosic mastery, artistic sensitivity and extraordinary versatility. A major prizewinner of many of the world's most prestigious international piano competitions - Reine Elisabeth of Belgium, Leeds, Salzburg, Sydney and Vienna - she established her early career by winning the Gold Medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as a Bronze Medalist of the 1986 Tschaikowsky International Piano Competition in Moscow.

With an active repertoire of nearly 100 piano concertos ranging from Bach to Wuorinen, she has appeared as soloist with America's most prominent orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Saint Louis and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras; and abroad with the Japan Philharmonic, City of Birmingham (U.K.) Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Kuopio (Finland) Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Spain). She was a featured artist at the "Piano 2000" Gala Concerts in the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony, and recently made her debut at Lincoln Center's "Mostly Mozart" Festival. In addition to her frequent North American concert appearances and radio broadcasts, she tours widely throughout the Far East on a yearly basis.

Ms. Buechner's recording of piano music by George Gershwin was selected as a "Record of the Month" by Stereophile magazine; her 1997 world première recording of the Busoni version of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations was profiled in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times; and her recording of Hollywood piano concertos by Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman won Germany's Deutsches Schauplatten Preis for best soundtrack. Pro Piano has just released her CD of the complete piano music of Stephen Foster, and her fourth recording for Koch International will shortly appear, of piano music by Rudolf Friml. Ms. Buechner's extensive discography also includes more than ten disks for the Yamaha Disklavier and Piano Soft systems.

Ms. Buechner has given premières of important new music and film scores by Larry Bell, Pierre Charvet, Richard Danielpour, Dick Hyman and Henry Martin. She appears regularly with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, as one of the few pianists to actively perform piano scores to silent movies, notably the 150-minute long restored version of Ben-Hur (1925), and the Danish classic Master of the House (1925). Ms. Buechner has also collaborated on dance projects with choreographer Neta Pulvermacher and toured extensively with the Mark Morris Dance Group.

Profiles of Ms. Buechner have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Paris Match, Noticias del Argentina, Out, Blade and Frontiers magazines; and she has been featured on the television programs Entertainment Tonight, Extra, In the Life, and Bynon. Her appearances on radio include profiles on NPR's The Fishko Files and Performance Today, WFMT's Dame Myra Hess Recital Series and WNYC's New Sounds with John Schaefer.

In 2003 Ms. Buechner was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia - Vancouver. She is a former faculty member of New York University, and has presented lectures and masterclasses worldwide, from the Royal Academy in London to Indiana University to the Kobe-Yamate Gakuen in Osaka, Japan. Sara Davis Buechner plays the Yamaha Piano exclusively.

Reviews

Buechner has it all -- intelligence, integrity, and all-encompassing technical prowess."

New York Times (Tim Page)
 

"Buechner's performance had a beauty that might have taken even Mozart's breath away."

Washington Post (Joseph Banno)
 

"This performance had everything - style, technique, taste and originality...each work was carefully chosen and struck a fine balance between accessibility and sophistication...Buechner made every phrase an event, placed every voice as if setting crystal on crushed velvet, and calculated every tempo fluctuation with keen dramatic timing."

New York Newsday (Philip Kennicott)
 

There was old-fashioned grandeur in Buechner's performance, a sweep that pianists like Rudolf Serkin Used to summon....extraordinary lyric playing."

Albany Times Union (Ron Emery)
 

"Buechner brought effortless technique and a lyrically fluid interpretive approach."

Alex Ross, The New York Times
 

"Buechner is one of those rare ones who obviously has won her imposing list of major awards for the right reasons. She plays the piano lovingly, the tone and phrasing beguiling and grateful, the facility fluent. Her musicality was persuasive as she shaped this music of quiet but deep-thought passion with its flickering play of feelings .... A very satisfying and elevating performance."

Robert Commanday, San Francisco Chronicle
 

"Buechner's brilliant performance was a reading that Rachmaninoff himself would have relished."

Milwaukee Journal

On Recordings:

"What stands out is not only technique, but intelligence...When it comes to clarity, flawless tempo selection, phrasing and precise control of timbre, Buechner has no superior...No point wasting time here, this is the closest thing to a perfect disc of Mozart piano music known to me.

In Tune (HT), review of Mozart Piano Works
 

"Buechner provides an excellent introduction to Bach-Busoni, performed with unusual intelligence and grace... requisite bravura and color. This is a first-rate disk of music that deserves reviving, by a highly gifted artist."

New York Times (Michael Kimmelman), Review of Bach-Busoni "Goldberg" Variations
 

Recording of the Month: "I have never heard a more effective or stylish treatment of Rhapsody in Blue than this."

Stereophile (Igor Kipnis), Review of Gershwin Piano Music
 

"It is difficult to imagine that there could ever be better recordings of these works....Buechner displays a virtuoso panache that is precisely what the music calls for."

Fanfare (Royal S. Brown), Review of Concertos by Herrmann, North and Waxman

Contact details and further information

E-mail Representative

For further details, including sound files, see Sara Davis Buechner's website