At the risk of coming off like another, more salacious
music blog, I bring news of an astonishing broadside fired between
harpsichordists. I don’t much care for the harpsichord and its repertoire, but
the rapid rise of Mahan Esfahani hasn’t escaped the notice of my twitter
timeline. He added to his trophy cabinet with victory in the BBC Music Magazine
Awards’ instrumental category for his DG Goldberg Variations, but it seems his
high public profile has not been universally popular among colleagues. An interview with Van Magazine this month led to a blistering response from fellow
period-keyboardist Andreas Staier, who’s clearly been holding it in for a
while:
“He’d sell his soul for a little publicity. A little calm
would be much better. But he can’t afford it. His fame and his career have more
to do with his words than with his music.”
There’s a lot more, which you can read here. It’s a
patient and careful takedown from someone who really knows what he’s talking
about that – though it’s certain Esfahani won’t see it like that. What piqued
my interest particularly, though, was his criticism of the classical music
press:
“The press is at fault here too. In none of the
interviews I cited was a single critical follow-up question asked. And the
media has such a short attention span that contradictory and inconsistent
statements are ignored even if they occur within just weeks of one other.”
I’ll no doubt sound like yet another blog if I dwell for
long on the media-PR complex that constitutes the vast majority of words
written about classical music, but suffice it to say, Staier has a very valid
point.
Now, I promise not to live-tweet the ensuing historically-informed
flame war.
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