Lebanese pianist Walid Akl (1945-1997) made his career in France, moving there at age 17 and studying at the Marguerite Long Academy. He did further study at the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieure de Musique de Paris, working with Germaine Mounier, Yvonne Lefébure and Jacques Février. He was concerned with perfection and his training in the leading music conservatories in France was a substantial support for his technical skills.
Walid Akl © discogs.com
He finished his studies in 1969 and started his performing career, first in Europe and then extending his travels to North America and the Middle East. He played with some of the leading orchestras of the day.
He is known best for his 14-disk recording of Haydn’s keyboard music. In 1987, New York Times reviewer Bernard Holland named it as a virtual reference work for Haydn. Holland described Akl’s playing as providing ‘a neat, accurate, always sincere and occasionally eloquent record of the music’. The recording was the first devoted to Haydn’s complete piano works and, in at least two different recitals in San Francisco and Luxembourg, he played the complete works.
Joseph Haydn: Piano Sonata No. 36 – I. Allegro
His recordings include works by Bach, Liszt, Borodin, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He also published a book on Julius Caesar, Jules César vu par Walid Akl (Julius Caesar seen by a musician), which included a CD of five chaconnes by Bach and Handel.
A private film made in 1986 for Lebanese Television records him performing Bach’s Prelude No. 8 from the Well-Tempered Klavier.
In memorials written at his early death after heart surgery, one writer declared that ‘the world has lost another Chopin, a Mozart, a Liszt or even another Proust (who died at his age)…’. He was viewed as a musical ambassador for Lebanon, important during the 1980s when war had engulfed the country.
Today, let’s remember this exceptional pianist!
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