Czech Chamber Music Society • Mahan Esfahani

Mahan Esfahani has made it his lifeʼs mission to rehabilitate the harpsichord in the mainstream of concert instruments, and to that end his creative programming and work in commissioning new works have drawn the attention of critics and audiences across Europe, Asia, and North America. He was the first and only harpsichordist to be a BBC New Generation Artist (2008–2010), a Borletti-Buitoni prize winner (2009), and a nominee for Gramophoneʼs Artist of the Year (2014, 2015, and 2017).

His work for the harpsichord has resulted in recitals in most of the major series and concert halls, amongst them Londonʼs Wigmore Hall and Barbican Centre, Oji Hall in Tokyo, Carnegie Hall in NYC, Sydney Opera House, Los Angelesʼs Walt Disney Concert Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, and the Leipzig Bach Festival, and concerto appearances with the BBC Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia, Czech Radio Symphony, Orchestra La Scintilla, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, with whom he was an artistic partner for 2016–2018.

His richly-varied discography includes seven critically-acclaimed recordings for Hyperion and Deutsche Grammophon – garnering one Gramophone award, two BBC Music Magazine Awards, a Diapason d’Or and ‘Choc de Classica’ in France, and an ICMA.

Esfahani studied musicology and history at Stanford University, where he first came into contact with the harpsichord in the class of Elaine Thornburgh. Following his decision to abandon the law for music, he studied harpsichord privately in Boston with Peter Watchorn before completing his formation under the celebrated Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková. Following a three-year stint as Artist-in-Residence at New College, Oxford, he continues his academic associations as an honorary member at Keble College, Oxford, and as professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He can be frequently heard as a commentator on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and as a host for such programs as Record Review, Building a Library, and Sunday Feature, as well as in live programmes with the popular mathematician and presenter Marcus du Sautoy; for the BBC’s Sunday Feature he is currently at work on his fourth radio documentary following two popular programmes on such subjects as the early history of African-American composers in the classical sphere and the development of orchestral music in Azerbaijan.

Born in Tehran in 1984 and raised in the United States, he lived in Milan and then London for several years before taking up residence in Prague.

Despite her youth, Anna Paulová, a winner of the Jiří Bělohlávek Prize, has already enjoyed a number of successes in competitions and on the concert stage. “All musicians have a natural tone colour and personality of their own. One just needs to find that, and not try to imitate anyone else”, says the young clarinettist, who is a laureate of the 2015 Prague Spring International Music Competition (Second Prize, Bohuslava Martinů Foundation Prize, Gideon Klein Foundation Prize) and a semi-finalist of the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich (2019), among other honours. The list of all her successes at international competitions is quite long. “I was very lucky to get into Milan Polák’s studio at the conservatoire; he started sending me to various international competitions right from my first year. First I took part at the conservatoire’s competition, then there were competitions in Italy, Slovenia, Germany, and Poland, and that was a great experience for me. It also motivated me that I was coming home from every competition with the first prize”, says Anna Paulová looking back on her early years of study. She is now a doctoral student at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

Besides Milan Polák, her other teachers at the Prague Conservatoire included Ludmila Peterková, then she studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Jiří Hlaváč and Vlastimil Mareš. She furthered her studies at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, where she had lessons with Sabine Meyer and Reiner Wehle, at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp studying under Annelien van Wauwe, and at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome under the guidance of Alessandro Carbonare. She has developed her performing skill at many masterclasses led by soloists and teachers including Sharon Kam, Shirley Brill, Charles Neidich, Yehuda Gilad, and Martin Fröst.

She began her solo career at age 15, making her debut with the Prague Philharmonia and the conductor Leoš Svárovský. Since then, she has appeared with more top Czech and foreign orchestras including the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in Zlín, the Münchener Kammerorchester, the Orquestra Cascais e Oeiras in Portugal, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana. In 2014, she made her solo debut with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek.

Besides pursuing a solo career, she also appears in chamber music with many outstanding instrumentalists including Charles Neidich, Ivo Kahánek, Martin Kasík, Václav Hudeček, Tomáš Jamník, and Lubomír Brabec. She performs Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in its original version for basset clarinet, but she otherwise focuses mainly on music by Czech composers of the 20th and 21st centuries (Bohuslav Martinů, Karel Husa, Viktor Kalabis, Josef Páleníček, Miloslav Ištvan, Jiří Teml, Zdeněk Šesták and others). She also collaborates with composers of the younger generation.

Milan Al-Ashhab, winner of the prestigious International violin competition Fritz Kreisler in Vienna, New York Concert Artists and Associates Worldwide Debut Audition (2018) and laureate of the Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow (2019), graduated from the Teplice Conservatory (Květoslava Hasilová) and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Ivan Štraus). Since 2019 he has been studying at Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna under the leadership of Peter Schuhmayer, deepening his knowledge at several masterclasses (Pinchas Zukerman, Gábor Takács-Nagy or Hagai Shaham).

He has collaborated with several Czech and foreign orchestras (ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Czech Philharmonic, Moscow Symphonic Orchestra, Hofer Symphoniker, Lʼarmonia terrena etc.) and regularly performs with Czech pianist and composer Adam Skoumal (Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall, Merkin Hall New York, Vienna Musikverein, Prague Spring, Mendelssohn festival in Switzerland). 

Milan Al-Ashhab plays a precious Italian instrument by Nicola Amati (Cremona, 1662), kindly lent by Swiss organisation Maggini-Stiftung.