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“Arabesques” piano recital by Marouan Benabdallah
June 03, 20168:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe headquarters (at Calle Alcalá, 62)
8:00 p.m.
€5 for tickets sold online, €6 at the box office
The acclaimed pianist is presenting “Arabesques” at a special concert, for the first time ever in Spain.
“Arabesques” is the title with which acclaimed Moroccan pianist Marouan Benabdallah is presenting a series of compositions created by musicians from the Arab world. In searching for these songs, he managed to bring together works from more than 70 authors with origins in practically the entire Arab world. The best selection of these pieces is being presented for the first time in Spain at this special concert held by Casa Árabe. Marouan Benabdallah is the main representative of his native country, Morocco, on the international concert circuit.
Tickets on sale for 5 euros at: www.casaarabe.es Those tickets which have not been sold online will be put on sale one hour before the concert at the Casa Árabe Auditorium door for the price of 6 euros (5 euros for the officially unemployed, Casa Árabe Language Center students and Youth Card holders. You must demonstrate your status by showing the proper document to receive the discount.)
Assigned seats with tickets.
photography: Pilvaxstudio / Balazs Borocz
Dia Succari (1938-2010), a composer, director and professor of Syrian origin, was the author of “The Night of Destiny,” a piece which evokes the ambience of a night of religious spirituality as part of one of the most important nights during Ramadan.
Salim Dada (1975- ) is a performer, composer and musicologist who was born in Algeria and educated in France and Italy. His “Algerian Miniatures” have been described as a message of peace and dialogue between the Arab-Islamic world and Europe.
Zad Moultaka (1967- ) is also a pianist, composer and painter, characterized by his diverse cultural training in Lebanon and France. Tireless in his personal search for ways to combine Western technique with elements from Arab music originating in the oral tradition, he is the author of “Two Muwashahas.”
Mohammed Fairouz (1985- ) is one of the most sophisticated musicians of his generation. His composition titled “El Male Rachamim” takes its name from one of the poems by acclaimed Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, remembering the prayer at Jewish funerals. The author dedicates this work to the memory of Jewish Hungarian composer György Ligeti, who was one of his teachers.
Boghos Gelalian (1927-2011), born in Syria in an Armenian diaspora community, lived most of his life in Beirut, Lebanon. The foundation of his education was Armenian and Turkish music, though also Western classical music. Resulting from this mixture of musical cultures is the piece “Canzona e Toccata.”
Nabil Benabdeljalil (1972- ) is a Moroccan composer and musicologist educated at the Strasbourg Conservatory. His work “Nocturne” expresses a major influence of music for piano by Chopin in his nostalgic melodies of Eastern inspiration.
Marouan Benabdallah has very closely followed the studies which Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) performed on North African music (songs and dances from Algeria and Egypt and pieces from Tunisian folklore). In this recital, he will be performing arrangements of some of his compositions, including “Africa Fantasia Opus 89” (1891).
With a musical background deeply rooted in the Hungarian tradition, Benabdallah was educated at the Bela Bartok Conservatory and Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, and in 2008 he received a Hungarian Parliament medal “to acknowledge his exceptional talent and achievements in the field of music,” an honor which he shares with other artists such as Plácido Domingo, José Cura and many more.
His international career began in 2003 after his triumphant success in the Hungarian Radio Competition and Andorra’s Grand Prize. Since then he has performed at concert halls around the world and has been invited by orchestras such as the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony, the Cannes Symphony, the Hungarian Radio Symphony, the Hilton Head Symphony (United States), the Venice Philharmonic, the Morocco Philharmonic, etc.
Marouan Benabdallah is highly praised by critics because of his “lyrical instinct” (New York Times), his “amazing natural virtuosity” (Nice-Matin), his “elegant, refined style” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and his “rhythmic energy and irresistible sense of dynamics” (Washington Post). However, these comments do not come from the press alone. The legendary Ferenc Rados describes him as a “remarkable musician,” and Daniel Barenboim has acknowledged his “spontaneity” and his “natural playfulness.”
His repertoire is enormous, encompassing everything from Scarlatti to the twentieth century, with a predilection he discovered very early in life for the work of Bartok and Rachmaninoff, though he plays Bach, Haydn, Schubert, Debussy or Ravel with the same passion.
Marouan Benabdallah lives between Paris, Budapest, Rabat and Washington and is a Yamaha Artist.