The 38-year-old Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani has develop into the youngest recipient of the Wigmore Medal, an award that – since its inauguration in 2007 – has recognised excellent worldwide artists who’ve made an excellent contribution to Wigmore Corridor. The medal, whose previous recipients embody Iestyn Davies, Christian Gerhaher, Angela Hewitt and Steven Isserlis amongst others, was offered to Esfahani following his efficiency of JS Bach‘s Artwork of Fugue – a part of his Bach cycle for the venue which started in 2017 and continued even by way of the pandemic.
Esfahani, who studied at Stanford College and with Zuzana Růžičková in Prague, is famend for his pioneering work as an advocate of the harpsichord. As snug working with electronics and new media as he’s with historical repertoire, he has carried out all around the world and, following a interval as Artist in Residence at New Faculty, Oxford, is presently a professor on the Guildhall College of Music & Drama.
‘Mahan Esfahani is now fairly rightly recognised for his excellent qualities as one of many world’s pre-eminent harpsichordists,’ learn the quotation for the medal. ‘Mahan is especially identified for his distinctive performances throughout a really big selection of repertoire. He’s a performer of star high quality, whether or not taking part in historical or trendy works – lots of them newly commissioned by him. And he’s a musician of strikingly broad mental pursuits: he challenges preconceptions of what a harpsichord recital could be. His unstinting advocacy for the instrument has been nothing in need of extraordinary.’
On receiving the medal Esfahani mentioned: ‘Wigmore Corridor’s assist of my ambitions and profession has been essential from the very starting of my skilled life,’ mentioned Esfahani on receiving the medal. ‘It’s a nice honour for me to obtain this signal of confidence in my work from one of many nice halls of the world, in its biggest metropolis.’
Photograph: Richard Cannon
