PCM: You were five years old when you were admitted to the Vienna Music University. What did you display at five that lead to the admission in the university?

Rudolf: After the war we had an upright piano in the house. I would try to play things I would hear on the radio. My uncle saw an announcement in the newspaper that they were seeking young talent for a program at the university.  I played for them the two things that I could do and they accepted me.  I still have the inscription book at home.

PCM: When did start to realize that you have this talent?

Rudolf: I think it was from age four I knew I wanted to be a pianist.

PCM: Did you grow up in a musical family?

Rudolf: No, I was the black sheep.

PCM: Your life has been very different being raised from age five to be this pianist.

Rudolf: When I was six I entered into ordinary schooling. All the teachers, professors and young people knew I was studying the piano. Any event in the school I had to play a piece here, a piece there. I was conditioned for this life from the beginning.

PCM: What age were you when started to perform professionally?

Rudolf: A few weeks ago I had an anniversary in the Vienna Concert Hall. I was age eleven when I played the 1^st Piano Concerto by Beethoven, fifty years later I played it again.

PCM: Did the years bring a different approach as to how you played the piece?

Rudolf: I’m sure it is different. I never listen to my own recordings. If they are twenty to thirty  years old I don’t mind. When I was going through my archives I found an old recording of myself playing a study by Fredrick Chopin from when I was eight years old. I was shocked and surprised how perfect I played the piece, spontaneous and instinctually right.

PCM: When you were growing up did you a have a sense of the different path that was in front of you?

Rudolf: Perhaps but not really. In the back of my mind it was there.

PCM: Was there ever a point where you were struggling in your career?

Rudolf: No I always had a continuous career but thankfully I was never a sensation because a sensation can never repeats themselves. I always worked. I worked in a lot of chamber music in the beginning until I had this solo career.

PCM: Something you said earlier, you don’t like to listen to yourself in recordings. When you record why do you prefer to only record live performances now?

Rudolf: I don’t want to record in the studio anymore because you go in with a different inspiration. You go in and know nothing can happen. On a stage there is a nervous spontaneous emotional performance that you can never repeat in the studio.

PCM: You have over one hundred recording to date. Do you feel the break down of the record industry?

Rudolf: This helps live performance. People don’t go to records shops anymore. I remember in Philadelphia there were so many records shops you could go to and talk about music. Now they are not there. What I feel is that the future is more and more in live performance.

Part 2