Lebanon's Abdel Rahman El Bacha is among the leading pianists to have emerged from the Middle East in the 20th century. He has an unusually large repertory of concertos and solo works stretching from Bach to Prokofiev. El Bacha was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 23, 1958. His father, Taufic El Basha, was a noted composer and conductor, and his mother, known as Widad, was a popular Lebanese-Jewish singer who was frequently heard on Lebanese radio. She did not read music, and El Bacha pointed to that as an influence on his belief that it was important to learn music by ear. She was one of the few Jews to remain in Lebanon through its civil war, but El Bacha, after a recital at the American University in Lebanon when he was 13, was offered scholarships to study in Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France, selecting the latter. Enrolling at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1974, he studied with Pierre Sancan. El Bacha scored a major breakthrough when he won the 1978 Queen Elizabeth Competition in Belgium. That led to a recording contract with the Forlane label, where he released his first album, Early Works of Prokofiev, in 1983. That recording was awarded the Grand Prix of the Académie Cros; El Bacha was presented with the award by Prokofiev's widow, Lina. Through the 1980s and '90s, El Bacha became an increasingly powerful concert draw internationally. He has appeared in such top venues as the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, traveling as far afield as Russia, Japan, and North and South America. El Bacha has a repertory comprising some 60 concertos and numerous solo works, including the complete concertos of Beethoven, Prokofiev, and Bartók, the complete solo works of Chopin and Ravel, and the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven, which he has performed as a group several times. In 2011, he recorded Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, for the Triton label, but many of his recordings focus on Chopin and on the Russsian virtuoso school. He has recorded for the Rewind, Fuga Libera, and Mirare labels in addition to Forlane and Triton; on Mirare, he released the album Chopin: Préludes, Fantaisie, Berceuse & Barcarolle in 2022. El Bacha lives in Brussels, Belgium. ~ James Manheim, Rovi