Abdel Rahman El Bacha was born in Beirut in 1958 into a family of musicians: his father was a composer and his mother the singer Wedad, who by his own account had a fine ear without reading music, and taught him the value of learning by listening. He began piano at nine with Zvart Sarkissian, a pupil of Marguerite Long and Jacques Février, and played his first concerto with orchestra at ten. Offered scholarships in France, Britain and the Soviet Union, he chose Paris, and left the Conservatoire with four prizes — piano, chamber music, harmony and counterpoint. In June 1978, at nineteen, he won the Queen Elisabeth Competition by unanimous decision, taking the audience prize as well. He holds dual Lebanese and French nationality.

His first record, made for Forlane in 1983, was a programme of early Prokofiev; it took the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, handed to him by Prokofiev’s widow. The repertoire he has recorded since runs past fifty concertos and centres on Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Prokofiev — which is to say almost exactly the ground this site exists to let listeners compare. Lebanon has given him the Médaille de l’Ordre du Mérite, its highest distinction.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Rahman_El_Bacha
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2528681