Praised as a “formidable and magnificent pianist” by the New York Concert Review, Egyptian-American pianist Wael Farouk is known for his groundbreaking performance projects. In 2021, Farouk gave a performance of Rachmaninoff’s concerti Nos. 1, 2, and 3 in a single evening with the New Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Kirk Muspratt, which the Chicago Tribune described as a “history-making concert.”
Farouk commands a vast repertoire of more than 70 concertos and 60 solo programs, spanning from Scarlatti to Bolcom, and including the complete piano works of J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff as well as the complete sonatas of Prokofiev, Scriabin, and Schubert. He has appeared as a soloist with such orchestras as the North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Saint-Etienne National Orchestra, the Academy of the Arts Orchestra, the Manhattan Symphony, and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. Since 2014, he has performed 30 different recital programs featuring the complete solo piano works of Rachmaninoff and Brahms, as well as Brahms’s complete piano chamber music. Other programs included works by Chopin, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Ravel, Bolcom, Busoni, and Godowsky; the complete Transcendental Études by Liszt; Bach’s The Art of Fugue, and Beethoven’s
Hammerklavier. He has also performed the complete piano concertos of Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and Beethoven (including all five Beethoven concertos in a single concert). In 2017, he gave the African premiere of the monumental Busoni piano concerto with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra. His solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 2013 was described as “absolutely masterful.”
Farouk received his B.M. at the Cairo Conservatory followed by a Fulbright Fellowship, which brought him to the U.S. to study with Marilyn Neeley at the Catholic University of America. He received an M.M. from Converse College and a D.M.A. degree from Rutgers University. Farouk is on the piano faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, and the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
