Mahan Esfahani ن
@MahanEsfahani
the harpsichordist; rare books, etc./ Iranian-American-British-Czech pen the occasional piece for @TheCriticMag all recordings for @hyperionrecords
Upcoming release klaxon, hashtag excited, blessed, etc. @hyperionrecords
No one actually enjoys Glenn Gould; it's a learnt behaviour from the time in college when one begins learning to signal superior artistic sensibilities
What’s an unpopular opinion you believe is genuinely true?
Well, they've found a way to make Oxford city centre even more terrible now.
Looking for a gym for when I'm in NYC a couple of times this season and Equinox makes me feel like I'd be paying out of my nose to be bullied by people named Kyle and Chad and if I wanted that I'd just go back to junior high school
I’ll never get tired of All Saints, Margaret Street, London’s Anglo-Catholic jewel
I have had the pleasure of meeting Sir John maybe twice on occasion and he just about the most gracious person in our field I can think of - kind, considerate, encouraging, wholly given to music.
🎓 Sir John Rutter, internationally renowned composer, conductor and former Director of Music at Clare College, received a Doctorate in Music
New personal hero just dropped
A 2015 press cutting on Larkin’s rejection of nomination for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry. ‘My idea of hell on earth…is a literary party, and I have an uneasy feeling that the post carries with it a lot of sherry-drill with important people.’
Ever since I built a harpsichord from a kit when I was 16, I've voiced maybe thousands of quills and today I finally had my first injury doing so, with a brand-new Japanese voicing scalpel. The bits of blood on two jacks are a marker of this rite of passage! #dedication
Marjorie, please! I enjoy all the meats of our cultural stew. Ahhh, ballet...
I'm often accused of not liking period instruments. This is not at all the case. I just believe that one must work as much "against" the instrument as one works with it, in order to make transcendent music. The late Frans Brüggen was a master thereat: youtu.be/QGyUb3soL6k?si…
Can someone be fat and still have aura ?
Can someone be fat and still have aura ?
I know we're supposed to be doing this for the art, etc., or whatever middle-class commonplaces... but maybe it's just because DDL has so much financial and social capital that he doesn't need to do anything. The second I have that, I'm outta here. independent.co.uk/arts-entertain…
One absolutely fascinating thing that's come up in all the biographies of great artistic and musical figures is - at least this is how I read it - that they almost all felt that their work had no relevance in their lifetimes and that they would be understood well afterwards.
Amazing photo
The writer Ernest Hemingway had a July 21st birthday. He was living in Cuba (Havana) when Aram Khachaturian led a Soviet musical delegation there in 1960. When they met, Aram was truly surprised to learn that his music was well represented in Ernest's record collection.
American novelist, short-story writer and journalist, Ernest Miller Hemingway was born #onthisday 1899. "You must be prepared to work always without applause"
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Based on your tweets, bio, and career as a harpsichordist with sharp cultural commentary, multi-national roots, and love for rare books and history, you're most akin to Frederick the Great: enlightened Prussian king, flutist-composer, intellectual patron, and frank, pugnacious…
Hello,@grok, which historical leader am I most similar to? Please take into consideration all of my tweets, my bio and all information in general.
Hello,@grok, which historical leader am I most similar to? Please take into consideration all of my tweets, my bio and all information in general.
Beautiful weekend in the north Bohemian countryside; picked plums and came upon a magnificent 18th-century organ in decent condition in a village church
This lyrical Prelude in F minor, BWV857, is written in the style of an allemande and comes at the mid-point in Book 1 of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier.
Here, @MahanEsfahani plays on a double-manual German harpsichord built by Huw Saunders, the instrument being a modern-day copy of an instrument that is thought to have belonged to Bach himself. Watch the video 🎥 youtu.be/8Z587aXtMjA?fe…