Omar Harfouch’s musical plea for world peace

Orchestral music as a plea for peace is not a new idea. The 95-year-old Pablo Casals played his “Song of the Birds” before the United Nations in 1971, and Daniel Barenboim continues to conduct the West-East Divan Orchestra, scheduled for the BBC Proms in London on August 11.

An orchestral work for peace composed and performed by a prominent businessman and politician, though, is something unusual. The Lebanese prime minister candidate and businessman Omar Harfouch debuted his “Concerto for Peace” in a concert for the European Commission late in 2023.

He performed it in Béziers with enthusiastic notices in the major French media and will reprise the work on September 18 at the Champs Elysee Theater in Paris and the United Nations in Geneva on September 20. The work also will be performed for Italy’s parliament.

Known to the French public as a television personality, Harfouch studied piano at Ukraine’s Glinka Conservatory and won a Moscow piano competition in the 1980s. After Israel and Lebanon agreed on maritime borders in 2023, Harfouch told a television interviewer that the deal constituted de facto recognition of the Jewish state and set the stage for a full peace agreement.

In a recent interview, Harfouch said: “My Concerto for Peace was built over the course of an inner journey of several years. I thought of this music as a path to peace, which takes the form of a dialogue between little Omar, who lives in the middle of a civil war without understanding it, and adult Omar, who lives in peace but sees the world sinking into war. And this little boy asks the adult not to let men accept this madness.

“One of the events that pushed me to finalize this work and to consider this European tour was the war in Ukraine. I was