Bechara El-Khoury, partly trained in Lebanon, came to France in 1979 and eventually became a French citizen. These ambitious orchestral works all date from the early part of his residence in France, a time during which he had the experience of watching his homeland collapse into paroxysms of house-to-house fighting. The music is, accordingly, mostly grim in mood, with lots of portentous tympani strokes, and two of these works, the Requiem pour orchestre, Op. 18 and the Poème symphonique No. 1, "Le Liban en flammes" (Lebanon ...
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Bechara El-Khoury, partly trained in Lebanon, came to France in 1979 and eventually became a French citizen. These ambitious orchestral works all date from the early part of his residence in France, a time during which he had the experience of watching his homeland collapse into paroxysms of house-to-house fighting. The music is, accordingly, mostly grim in mood, with lots of portentous tympani strokes, and two of these works, the Requiem pour orchestre, Op. 18 and the Poème symphonique No. 1, "Le Liban en flammes" (Lebanon in Flames), Op. 14, directly address Lebanon's civil war. These works are part of a trilogy on this theme; the third work, Symphony: The Ruins of Beirut, has inexplicably been issued by Naxos on a different CD.All this music for large orchestra was written between 1979 and 1982, during which time El-Khoury was also studying and writing other works. That gives an idea of what it's like: it is confident, even exuberant in its handling of the orchestra, but it lacks an individual...
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