Geoff Brown
The Times
August 2024

With five predecessors in the bag, you might think that Mahan Esfahani’s latest survey of Bach’s keyboard music only contains odds and ends. True, the items, variously played on a harpsichord and clavichord, are brief: the album contains 55 tracks, the shortest, capturing a surviving fragment, lasting 32 seconds. But Bach’s genius is so pervasive in these preludes, inventions and sinfonias, and Esfahani’s playing so lively and subtle, that no one should bemoan the absence of grand musical architecture. Hyperion’s recording and engineering spread their own delight by treasuring the dying reverberation of a piece’s last note and taking a helpful breath before plunging us into the next jewel. This is the kind of album you wish would never end.