Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Period drama

The online spat between Mahan Esfahani and Andreas Staier is potentially damaging an international career

Harpsichordists are supposed to make love, not war: Sir Thomas Beecham famously compared the sound they make to ‘two skeletons copulating on a tin roof’. But now two masters of the instrument, the Iranian-American Mahan Esfahani and the German Andreas Staier, are locked in mortal combat.

For connoisseurs of finely tuned insults, it’s riveting stuff. For their colleagues it’s a wretched business, because one of the two musicians is setting fire to his own reputation. Also, a third harpsichordist — a gifted young Frenchman, Jean Rondeau — has been cruelly dragged into the feud.

It goes without saying in period instrument circles that Esfahani picked the fight. The 33-year-old has been starting small wars since he launched himself a decade ago as the harpsichord’s global ambassador-cum-saviour. His modus operandi — damning his fellow musicians as racist snobs — is pointlessly offensive, but he can rely on the arts establishment for covering fire. A young Middle Eastern ‘baroquestar’ who supports #BlackLivesMatter? What’s not to like? And it’s true that there’s a refreshing quality to Esfahani’s playing and repertoire: he can dispatch a piece of American sewing-machine minimalism as nimbly as a Tudor pavan.

He’s also pretty dexterous with the ‘block’ button on social media, as I discovered a few years ago after a political squabble. Before that, I’d met him once. He was charming and garrulous. I can understand why he makes friends easily and why they’re upset when they’re dropped for accidentally implying that Mahan isn’t the only show in town.

Anyway, now things have got out of hand. In April, Esfahani told the online magazine Van that other harpsichordists were spreading sinister nationalism. At the Bruges festival, it was ‘sickening’ to hear students from the Low Countries and France dismiss the Russian school as mere technicians.

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