Mahan Esfahani

Iranian-American harpsichordist, conductor and musicologist born in Tehran on May 22, 1984, Mahan Esfahani grew up in Washington D.C. where his family settled and discovered the works of Bach. Fascinated by the harpsichord, he studied at Stanford University under George Houle and completed his training in Boston with Peter Watchorn (with whom he recorded a volume of pieces by John Bull in 2009), then in Milan with Lorenzo Ghielmi. Asked for a residency at New College, Oxford, England in 2007, he made his debut at the BBC Proms in 2009 and began an international career as a soloist. In 2014, after winning the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Prize, the harpsichordist recorded his first album devoted to the Württemberg Sonatas of C.P.E. Bach for the Hyperion label and awarded by Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and Diapason. Later in the year, his London recital at the Wigmore Hall gave rise to a recording, Byrd - Bach - Ligeti. Mahan Esfahani continued his training and took advantage of lessons given in Prague by the great harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova. He then recorded pieces for harpsichord by Rameau and teamed up with the Danish flautist Michala Pietri for two albums, La Follia and UK DK. Signed by the Deutsche Grammophon label, he inaugurated this collaboration with the recital Time Present and Time Past (2015), which aligned baroque compositions by Bach, Geminiani, A. Scarlatti against contemporary pieces by Steve Reich and Henry Gorecki. He then followed up with the obligatory passage for any harpsichordist, Bach's Goldberg Variations. If his modern approach to the harpsichord has sometimes disconcerted the public, or even some of his peers, Mahan Esfahani is nonetheless considered a talented instrumentalist. He also conducts ensembles such as The English Concert or The Academy of Ancient Music, while continuing his prolific activity as a soloist with a series of recordings devoted to Bach such as The Toccatas (2019), The Six Partitas (2020), Italian Concerto & French Overture (2022), Notebooks for Anna Magdalena (2023), The French Suites (2023) or Preludes, Inventions & Sinfonias (2024).

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