It would be hard not to be impressed by Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. Young, suave, eloquent, he became familiar to Radio 3 listeners as the BBC New Generation Artist who not only performed prolifically but spoke with passion about his instrument and its repertoire. He's an inquisitive mind – currently honorary member at Keble College, Oxford and about to premiere his own orchestration of Bach's Art of Fugue at the Proms on Saturday afternoon. He didn't expound much during this recital in the Picture Gallery at Paxton House, but his self-penned programme notes were fearsomely informed and from the heart.
That combination summed up his playing, too. In a beautifully chosen programme of Gibbons, d'Anglebert, Couperin, Ciaja and Bach, Esfahani's touch was always insightful and, above all, visceral. His mouth gnawed at the crunchy dissonances of Gibbons's Lord Salisbury Pavan and Galliard, gasped at Ciaja's weirdly belligerent Sonata No 1 and broke into a grin at d'Anglebert's arrangement of the magisterial Passacaglia from Lully's Armide. His fingers are ferociously nimble; in a Q&A after the concert he admitted to slips in Bach's English Suite in G minor, but they didn't matter. Ornaments tumbled out verbosely, never thrown away but never obscuring the elegance of the line. Finely felt hesitations and emphases drew the ear towards hidden countermelodies and particularly juicy dissonances. It wasn't always polite playing: Esfahani attacked heavily, pounded repetitions, dragged and overlapped with insistence. Yet he never overdid it.
Occasionally, in his efforts to produce legato lines – an age-old challenge on a harpsichord, whose plucking mechanism makes it essentially a staccato instrument – Esfahani opted for continuity of sound where a bit of space between notes might have added colour. Still, that's a minor complaint for a phenomenally accomplished performance.
• Broadcast live on Radio 3. Details: bbc.co.uk/proms
