Czech Chamber Music Society • Mahan Esfahani & Hille Perl

Mahan Esfahani, a non-conformist artist and experimenter, has made it his life’s goal to restore the harpsichord’s standing as a usual instrument for concert performing. He also intends to raise the instrument’s interpretive standards because, as he himself puts it: “I have heard leading representatives of the world of the harpsichord play recitals that sounded like someone had just died.” His tireless pursuit of new music for his instrument has drawn the attention of listeners and critics all over Europe, Asia, and North America. From 2008 to 2010, he was the first and only harpsichordist to hold the title of BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and in 2009 he won the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He has been nominated repeatedly for the title of Artist of the Year by the music magazine Gramophone. In 2022 he became the youngest recipient of the Wigmore Medal for his significant artistic contribution to that London concert hall and his long-term relationship with it. Previous medal recipients have included Thomas Quasthoff and the artist-in-residence for the 128th season of the Czech Philharmonic, Sir András Schiff.

Esfahani’s excellence has earned him the chance to perform on most of the world’s most important stages such as Wigmore Hall mentioned above (where he has appeared more the 40 times), Tokyo’s Oji Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera, and the Berlin Konzerthaus. He has appeared as a soloist with such orchestras as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonic, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In 2011 he played the first harpsichord recital in the history of London’s BBC Proms.

You can hear Mahan Esfahani not only on the concert stage, but also at home: he has made seven recordings covering a wide range of repertoire on the Hyperion and Deutsche Grammophon (DG) labels; in 2014 he signed an exclusive recording contract with DG. His recordings have received critical acclaim, earning him a Gramophone Award, the BBC Music Magazine Award, and the Diapason d’Or. He works in close collaboration with BBC Radio, and he is preparing programmes on the beginnings of classical music by African-American composers and on the development of orchestral music in Azerbaijan.

Mahan Esfahani was born in Teheran and grew up in the USA, where he studied musicology and history at Stanford University. It was there, in the studio of Elaine Thornburgh, that he first came into contact with the harpsichord. He then studied privately under Peter Watchorn in Boston and then in Prague under his role model Zuzana Růžičková as her last pupil. (Esfahani’s repertoire naturally includes the Harpsichord Concerto by Viktor Kalabis, the husband of Zuzana Růžičková.) After three years as artist-in-residence at Oxford University’s New College, he became an honorary member at Oxford’s Keble College and a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

He finally settled in Prague. He owns a harpsichord made to his specifications, allowing him to cover repertoire of the last four centuries of musical development. It has several extra manuals and an added 16-foot register. He also dreams of having a quarter-tone harpsichord that would allow him, as he describes it, to “explore the harpsichord’s possibilities through to the bone”.

Hille Perl, born in Bremen/Germany, is considered to be one of the world's finest viola da gamba players. For more than 30 years she has been helping to bring viol music in Germany, Europe and far beyond into focus. Critics praise "her virtuoso playing full of passion, seriousness and lightness" as well as her talent for improvisation.

Hille Perl decided to play the viola da gamba after hearing a Wieland Kuijken concert at a very young age, when she was five. Since then music is the foremost means of communication between human beings for her, more precise and intense and unmistakable than language, of greater emotional significance than any other experience besides love. To her, music is a means of connecting not only the past and the future but also a way of socially integrating the most conflicting aspects of existence.

Perl has specialized in Spanish, Italian, German, solo and ensemble music of the 17th and 18th centuries, playing the treble viol, the seven-string bass viol, Baroque guitar and Lirone. With her instruments Perl travels the world, playing concerts with different groups or soloizing. She has founded several ensembles, including the Sirius Viols and Los Otros.

Perl recorded many CDs which have earned wide critical acclaim and many prizes, including several German ECHO Klassik Awards and a Deutsche Schallplattenpreis. A couple of years ago she started playing an electric viol, first as an experience for herself, then in concert and finally, she recorded a CD, “Born to be mild” (Sony), together with her daughter Marthe Perl and her long-term musical partner Lee Santana.

In 2017, Perl had her on-screen acting debut in Academy Award-winning Austrian director’s grim family drama/social commentary film, “Happy End.”

When not on tour Perl lives on a farm in northern Germany with her family and some sheep, geese, chickens, three cats and two dogs, lots of trees and also grows vegetables.

She passionately teaches her students at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, everything she knows about music, playing the gamba, and how not to be jealous if someone plays better than you.