Nothing Flashy About This Concert Pianist

Lebanese Pianist El Bacha does not sensationalize the music he plays; he simply plays expressively.
Nothing Flashy About This Concert Pianist
Abdel Rahman El Bacha as he prepares for his performance on the last night of the international music festival at the historic Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A France-based Lebanese classical pianist and composer, Bacha is considered to be among the leading classical pianists to have emerged from the Middle East and has won a number of international prizes. (Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)
9/4/2008
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/classicalPianist.jpg" alt="Abdel Rahman El Bacha as he prepares for his performance on the last night of the international music festival at the historic Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A France-based Lebanese classical pianist and composer, Bacha is considered to be among the leading classical pianists to have emerged from the Middle East and has won a number of international prizes. (Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)" title="Abdel Rahman El Bacha as he prepares for his performance on the last night of the international music festival at the historic Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A France-based Lebanese classical pianist and composer, Bacha is considered to be among the leading classical pianists to have emerged from the Middle East and has won a number of international prizes. (Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1833783"/></a>
Abdel Rahman El Bacha as he prepares for his performance on the last night of the international music festival at the historic Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A France-based Lebanese classical pianist and composer, Bacha is considered to be among the leading classical pianists to have emerged from the Middle East and has won a number of international prizes. (Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images)

“I do not want to make a superficial impact,” said Abdel Rahman El Bacha in an interview with the UNESCO Courier in 1992.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, at age 4 El Bacha was humming the tunes his father had written and at age 6 he could play his favorites on the piano.

El Bacha won the Concours Reine Elisabeth de Belgique international music competition by a unanimous judgment at the age of 19. His recording in 1983, “Early Works” by Sergei Prokofiev won the Grand Prix de l'Académie Charles Cros. He was recently awarded the Médaille de l’Ordre du Mérite by the president of the Lebanese Republic, the highest distinction of his native country.

As to the power behind his playing, he explained in the same interview: “What I am looking for is true expressiveness. I want to please, but only the most demanding ear. I do not want to make a superficial impact. … I want to use my technical gifts to strive for the purest and most rigorous form of expression. This is not to everybody’s taste and those who see art as a diverting pastime do not necessarily appreciate my style of playing.”

This is not to say that his playing does not please. When he won the Concours Reine Elisabeth de Belgique, he also won the Audience Award at the same time.

“Consummate art,” he explained, “to some degree entails achieving harmony between mind and body. I have always looked forward to sitting down at the piano and playing. The moment I feel that I am anywhere near saturation point, I stop, so that my relationship with the piano and music remains harmonious. I am happy whenever listeners experience this unity directly, through the interpretations I offer them. Classical music has a spiritual and aesthetic dimension that brings me great happiness.”

Sharon writes theater reviews, opinion pieces on our culture, and the classics series. Classics: Looking Forward Looking Backward: Practitioners involved with the classical arts respond to why they think the texts, forms, and methods of the classics are worth keeping and why they continue to look to the past for that which inspires and speaks to us. To see the full series, see ept.ms/LookingAtClassics.
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