“With his history-making concert…pianist Wael Farouk speaks to social inequities and is ready to reach higher” Chicago Tribune

The last time the pianist played with the New Philharmonic, in Glen Ellyn, he tackled all five Beethoven concerti in a single concert. Before that, he performed the complete solo piano catalog of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Johannes Brahms in a series of recitals at the schools at which he teaches…That makes Farouk’s concert of Rachmaninoff’s First, Second, and Third Concertos — also alongside the New Philharmonic, and streaming April 17 to June 15 — something of an outlier. Rachmaninoff, after all, wrote a fourth concerto, as well as the concerto-in-all-but-name “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” But playing all five in one sitting comes out to more than three straight hours of music, with nothing to say of much-needed breaks for soloist, conductor, and orchestra. After consulting with music director Kirk Muspratt, Farouk, 40, decided to perform “just” the first three concerti — a feat so unheard of that it may be the first time a pianist has played all three titanic works on one program…Read the full review here