Since making his London debut in 2009, Mahan Esfahani has established himself as the first harpsichordist in a generation whose work spans virtually all areas of classical music-making, from critically acclaimed performances and recordings of standard repertoire to working with the leading composers of the day and pioneering concerto appearances with major symphony orchestras on four continents. He was the first and only harpsichordist to be a BBC New Generation Artist (2008-2010), a Borletti-Buitoni prize winner (2009), a nominee for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year (2014, 2015 and 2017) and on the shortlist as Instrumentalist of the Year for the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards (2013 and 2019). In 2022 he received the Wigmore Medal for his contributions to musical life as a solo artist.

Esfahani’s work on new and modern music is particularly acclaimed, with high-profile solo and concertante commissions from George Lewis, Bent Sørensen, Poul Ruders, Anahita Abbasi, Daniel Kidane and Michael Berkeley, among others. His commitment to exploring the contemporary voice for the harpsichord is reflected in two recent releases for Hyperion: Musique? (a compilation of electronic and acoustic works), and an album of twentieth-century Czech harpsichord concertos which won the 2023 Opus Klassik Concerto Recording of the Year award.

His richly varied discography for Hyperion and Deutsche Grammophon—including this ongoing series of the complete works of Bach—has been acclaimed in the English- and foreign-language press, and has garnered one Gramophone Award, two BBC Music Magazine Awards, a Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, a Diapason d’Or and ‘Choc de Classica’ (France), and an ICMA, as well as a spot on The New York Times’s List of Top Recordings.

He can be frequently heard as a commentator on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, as a host for Record Review, Building a Library and Sunday Feature, and on live programmes with the mathematician and presenter Marcus du Sautoy; for the BBC’s Sunday Feature he is at work on his fourth radio documentary, following popular programmes on such subjects as the early history of African-American composers and the development of orchestral music in Azerbaijan.

Born in Tehran in 1984, Esfahani grew up in the United States, studying musicology and history at Stanford University and working as a repetiteur and studying in Boston with Peter Watchorn before completing his studies in Prague with the celebrated Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková. Following several years spent in Milan, Oxford and London, he now makes his home in Prague.