^M00:00:12 >> Anne McLean: Hello. I'm Anne McLean for Concerts from the Library of Congress. I'm delighted today to be talking with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. Thanks for joining us. It's lovely to see you. >> Mahan Esfahani: It's nice to see you again. >> Anne McLean: Yeah, and to be able to share your performance with a much larger audience than we could fit into the Coolidge Auditorium. >> Mahan Esfahani: That's right. >> Anne McLean: So you know, it's going to be interesting to be talking with you about two subjects I know are lifelong passions for you, the music of J.S. Bach and contemporary music for the harpsichord. So we can just jump in and talk about it. But Bach has really been something a through-line in your life since your childhood, I believe. >> Mahan Esfahani: That's right. Yes. And well, you know, Bach was always the, if you like, the intermediary for me discovering other music in a way. I came to the music of, you know, Mozart, a lot of contemporary music, Schoenberg, things like that in a funny way through Bach either with that composer's relationship with Bach's music or, you know, in the case of Schoenberg, their extraordinary insight with Bach's music especially in writing about it. So you know, he's this -- he's the kind of Virgil, if you like, in my kind of journey. And so that's very -- that's very special to me. >> Anne McLean: And you said that you -- when you encountered the harpsichord as a young boy that this started you on a path where you wanted to not so much necessarily be a harpsichordist but spend your life with the harpsichord. And that's what I see in your career. It's lovely to have followed this, you know. You know, I wanted to say that we are very pleased to be able to revisit with you a little bit of the conversations we've had in the past. And we are pleased that you were once able to play our Pleyel instrument that was owned by Wanda Landowska. And so, since maybe a decade or so, we've been able to talk with you and follow your interests, particularly in Bach. So maybe let's start with this. How did you frame this program which has the Six Little Preludes, and then how did you build it? It's a beautiful program. >> Mahan Esfahani: Well, of course, originally when we had assumed, shall we say, less fraught times and the assumption that I would be in Washington. Of course, the hope was that I would come and play Landowska's Pleyel for, you know, at least part of the concert. This is a very different animal from a period harpsichord. Much has been, you know, discussed in that respect. And the Six Little Preludes are actually amongst the works of Bach which Landowska recorded. Funny enough, in her career, of course, Bach is a composer with which she was the most associated. But actually, she didn't record all that much of his music. There are big gaps in that discography. I mean, she only recorded, well, she recorded the Goldberg Variations twice. She didn't do the Italian Concerto. She didn't the French Overture. You know -- >> Anne McLean: Yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- she didn't do -- I think she only did the First and the Second Partitas, for example, things like that. So there's big gaps there. And but the Six Little Preludes was one of the first recordings of hers that I'd heard of. Of course, on a CD transfer. And so I thought well that would be quite fun to play on the Pleyel or maybe you know, with the other Bach works in the program I'd play one of them on the Pleyel, the other one the Baroque >> Anne McLean: It would have been -- >> Mahan Esfahani: -- copy. >> Anne McLean: Yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: And of course, they are pedagogical works, we think, we don't really know. But they're actually really good program openers because it gives you a second just to sort of, eh, it's the sort musical equivalent of that. You sort of get your fingers -- >> Anne McLean: Yes. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- ready. And he gives you, you know, the basic intervals that you're going to be working with. And so it's a nice way of sort of, easing into -- easing into the evening. >> Anne McLean: You know, I was looking at something about these pieces, and I read that they were described as pieces for the beginner and the novice in a will of C.P.E. Bach in 1790. And I hadn't seen that line before, the term "unfanger" just so it's interesting. I knew they were sort of teaching pieces, but I never knew who he wrote them for. One thing I wanted to say was that so many of us who are amateur pianists and amateur keyboard players are struck so much by the virtuosity of the writing and the complexity and the structures and so on. And we don't know so much about the legato. And I saw this comment about Bach was writing in his inventions preface about how to arrive at the singing line. It's so interesting. And you bring these out -- this out so much in these performances of these little pieces. It's so charming. >> Mahan Esfahani: Well, of course, you know, what Bach means when he writes that. And I think in the original German, he actually does say "cantabile," so I think he actually does the Italian term "cantabile." What that means is, of course, a big discussion because, of course, firstly, 18th-century writers are frequently talking about making music speak, right? >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: So there's speech patterns in music which inevitably, you know, have consonants and which have, you know, accents, you know, things like, I don't know, glottal stops. You might have accents in certain parts of the sentence, things of that nature. So you know, when we talk about singing, we should be careful that we don't think of the late 19th-century, early 20th-century notion of cantabile as the unbroken line. Rather that singing is, you know, there's an impression of singing which has to do with the distribution of consonants and of vowels in music and in words. And I think that frequently is forgotten. I was listening the other day to Harnoncourt's recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies. And of course, you know, if you look at some of the great old recordings like Mengelberg, you know, Furtwängler, Charles Munch, people like that, they're oboists. There's that famous line in the first movement of the First -- of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, you know, that famous oboe solo. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: And you know, there were a number of oboists in the early 20th century who were praised for being able to master this unbroken line. But of course, Harnoncourt kind of turns that on its head and says, well, that's not -- that's not the only way to play cantabile. I mean, there can be breaths. There can be articulations. That's a conversation I frequently have with wind players about what do they mean about cantabile. So you know, you might also say in the inventions and in the Six Little Preludes, and of course, there are other little preludes that Bach is teaching us how to use phrasing to give the illusion that the instrument has lungs. And I think that's a kind of lifelong project for a harpsichordist. >> Anne McLean: Exactly. That's a great way to answer that. I'm so pleased that you are performing the French Overture, such a magnificent piece. And I was interested. I wanted you to talk about your comment that this is his magnum opus that it shows what you say puts the harpsichord through its paces. How does he illuminate this? Can you elaborate on that? >> Mahan Esfahani: Well, the French Overture, originally, he calls it the Ouvertüre nach französischer Art, which is overture in the French, you know, after the French manner. And you know, this is very much French in a Saxon German accent, of course. But Bach is taking what you might say are genres, styles that are in the ready vocabulary, central vocabulary, right, things like overtures, courantes, you know, names of certain dances, gavottes. He does this in the first part of Clavier-Übung, which has the partitas as well. And he takes these known forms as a space for, you know, if you like, as a space for reflection on the possibilities of these forms and the way that he can break out of the forms to say new things. So in the case of -- he does this in the partitas as well. In the case of this overture, for example, the introductions to these, you know, high baroque French overtures generally, there was a sort of slow introduction. And then you'd have -- and then you'd have a fugue. And for example, in the fugue, he imitates concerto style. There's a clear delineation between tutti and the soloist. In the opening section, there's the use of sort of subsidiary melodic material in a way which becomes motivic, you know. He makes a motif out of unimportant material, which comes back later and might even come in the fugue. He does that also in the Sixth Partita. And so you know, what he's fundamentally doing by 1735, which is when he publishes the French Overture, is that he's taking baroque forms but the message is very much a classical message, which is, you know, which is based much more on a, you know, cyclical notions of motif. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: And so in a, you know, his style, it's not the Beethovenian style to simply break the mold. Bach's way of introducing revolutionary ideas is to do it through -- to do it through known genres and to sort of -- and to sort of turn them upside their heads. I mean, you might say, Jane Austen does this. If you look at a work like Lady Susan, for example, which is an epistolary novel, right? It's a novel in the form of letters. That's an old genre of novel that goes back to the early 18th century. ^M00:10:13 But what she does in it, the way that she comments on, you know, for example, how people are the victim of their social surroundings and how it leads them to make decisions which, you know, might be out of, you know, keeping with their personal morays and such is actually quite revolutionary. I mean, had she, you know, had she broken the genre of the novel and done it as a, I don't know, a piece of performance art in the manner of, you know, Abramovic or something like that, in a sense it might have been less effective because, you know, she disarms the reader, and Bach, in this sense, disarms the listener by giving you something seemingly familiar but actually totally sort of setting it on fire and destroying it. And I think what's really interesting, Anne, is that this is the last great baroque overture that's written. You know, in the same way, that, you know, the Sixth Partita has the last great baroque toccata written. It's almost like when he says it, he both distills the history of the form. And he so disturbs the goal post that after that, what could you say? >> Anne McLean: Yeah, exactly. You know, in terms of the sound itself, and I know that you have talked a lot about your teacher and her concept of pure sound, I wanted you to comment on that, but just that opening chord, in your performance, it's so tragic. So for people who are not familiar with the harpsichord, the pluck-stringed, you know, how it works and so on, but just from a general point of view, how do you create that sound? How do you make it tragic? >> Mahan Esfahani: I don't remember what I did. Well, of course, it's a matter of timing, isn't it? Everything is a matter of timing. If I'm not mistaken, of course, it opens with a four-note chord in B minor. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: And then the first melody, the first bit of melodic, you know, material, let's call it, comes in. And I think that silence, just that kind of drama of that chord, you know, offers a lot of space for, you know, for time. For example, it has to do with how you roll the chord. One might add an octave. For example, we know that in Bach time, there are instruments with an extra register at the sixteen-foot, which produces an extra octave, which the Pleyel incidentally has. And I've had an instrument that's been built like that. And you know, that space before he speaks, that's something that Bach learns from Handel, by the way. And I used to really dine out on not liking Handel's music. I actually adore Handel. I think Handel is a god -- >> Anne McLean: Yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- of music. And certainly, Bach thought so. And Handel has these wonderful things. For example, in the Opus Six and Concerti Grossi Opus Three, Opus Six where simply waiting for material has its own meaning. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: And I think that Bach learns from Handel this art of building fairly solid edifices which with, you know, not overly complex material. You know, if you look in the French Overture for most of it, you know, the keys are what, one, four, five, you know, fairly familiar keys. He doesn't go into any sort of double sharps, nothing like that. And you know, it's not a orchestral transcription. But he gives the impression of this monumental quality that the harpsichord can have. And you know, since you mentioned my teacher, I mean, Růžičková, you know, that was kind of her gift as a player was that she was able to create great architectural structures in her playing. And so that's -- I hope I learned a little bit of that from her. But you know, it's too early to tell. >> Anne McLean: You've talked about her saying that each note has a purpose or there's a purpose in every note and a level of maturity that comes through in this kind of thinking. In terms of sound and colors, it's really fascinating to hear this piece in that church setting, the Church of Saints Simon and Jude. And I wanted to ask you quickly about the harpsichord itself. Is this a special instrument for you? >> Mahan Esfahani: This is my home instrument. I have two instruments. One is the instrument that I had built two years ago with a carbon fiber soundboard because I was always tired of the instability of the instrument. And I thought, well, let's mess around -- >> Anne McLean: Interesting. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- here with it, and I got an amazing builder to do it, and then it's very long. It uses almost, you know, not quite, but almost sort of Pythagorean scaling and things like that. And he's a really magnificent builder. And that lives in London because I use it for a lot of recording and also it gets moved from London when I want to do big concertos and stuff like that. I mean, it is -- this instrument is so loud that you don't even need to amplify it for concertos which is quite a feat. And then the instrument that I have at home is a, you know, fairly -- it's a very good instrument. But it's a fairly bog-standard copy of a early 18th-century German instrument with not as many registers, not as many, you know, bells and whistles if you like. But it's kind of my instrument that gets abuse because I play everything from Byrd to sort of Xenakis on this instrument. And then, of course, as you hear in a program, the modern music also sounds, you know, pretty good on it. >> Anne McLean: Yeah, and I was thinking -- Well, I want to get to that in a moment. Before we leave this and talk about the modern music, I wanted to ask you a question about the inner voices in the Landowska papers that you discovered. I noticed you had written about this. It's very interesting. What are those inner voices? Are they middle -- Oh, yeah, tell us about that. >> Mahan Esfahani: I have that right here. Yeah, well, actually, so as you know, since I was just a, you know, spring chicken, I was coming around to the Library of Congress. And you guys let me rummage through all the Landowska stuff. And there'll be a -- there'll be a book that'll come out of that at some point. But anyway, I looked through her -- What's very precious about that collection is that you have all of her annotated scores of Bach's music which is great. And she's written in, you know, you can see, she's written in fingerings and phrasing. And in one of the pieces, which is the First Bourree, she actually, as you can see, she writes in an alto voice to a two-voice structure. And I just thought it would be kind of fun to play that. As it happens, she was preparing the French Overture for a recording when she died in 1959. And so she never recorded it. But this is her -- It's clear from this score that she was just getting ready to record it. And her most celebrated student, which is -- who is Rafael Puyana, recorded it in the 1960s for, I think, for Mercury Records in New York. And he pretty much uses, you know, all of her -- He was a very loyal student, shall we say. And he did basically whatever she told him to do. Whereas, of course, Kirkpatrick was one of her students, and he totally rebelled against her and did nothing that she did. Some people said that Kirkpatrick even -- They said that he tried so hard to avoid being Landowska that he would fall back the other way. And so she, you know, either way you cut it, she was a very formidable personality. And I think Kirkpatrick is the only one of her students who doesn't sound like her. You know, he sounds nothing -- >> Anne McLean: Interesting. >> Mahan Esfahani: He sounds nothing like her. And they disliked each other in any case. >> Anne McLean: Well, before we leave this magnificent overture, tell us a little about the echo. It's so rare in Bach, at the end of the concerto. >> Mahan Esfahani: At the end of the suite. >> Anne McLean: At the end of the overture. >> Mahan Esfahani: Right. God, that is some piece. Well, you know, Bach is clearly evoking, you know, ballet music. There's no question here, right? And the French have these "pièces de caractère" which evoke and portray, you know, quite literally the characters of the dance. And I like to think of. You have this gigue which many people play quite quickly. I play it a little slower. And it's quite a pastoral -- Maybe pastoral is not the right word. It's quite a rustic gigue. And then afterwards the echo. I've always thought of it as being this sort of virtuoso dancers just enter the stage and sort of sweep up everything. And of course, literally, the name implies echo because Bach very skillfully, and he indicates this in the score, he very skillfully indicates when you go to the upper manual, which he says is the piano as opposed to the forte register. And that it's meant to be done, I think, in this seamless way that would suggest an echo. Except the funny thing about the echo is that the parts that are played on the upper manual are never exact echoes, right? They're never exact imitations -- >> Anne McLean: Interesting. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- and so the question is, you know, is it meant to imitate, you know, when you have an echo in a reverberant space, you just hear a lot of sort of color rather than anything. Is he making a joke about it? It's not really clear. But -- >> Anne McLean: It is so charming. >> Mahan Esfahani: Yeah, it is super charming. And it's very, compared to the rest of the suite with the exception of the first movement, the rest of the suite has a very 17th-century quality. But this first and last movements very much anchor it in the space of high 18th-century music. And it's certainly the sort of thing that Bach would have heard if he went to Dresden, for example, to watch ballet, which we know he did. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: And it's him, you know, responding, if you like, to the world around him. ^M00:20:43 >> Anne McLean: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, let's talk about your new music world and your passion for this as well. Your work in new music really spans so many things. And you've talked about the 50 plus modern concerti that exist now for the harpsichord, which I didn't quite realize. And you've commissioned a lot of work. Tell us about what you're doing now and how this is informed by your study of the past. >> Mahan Esfahani: So actually, you know, if I had been in D.C., what I really wanted to do was one of the many works that I do with an electric -- excuse me -- electronic setup, right? So a lot of these pieces, I don't want to call them sound installations. But for example, there's Josef Tal, who wrote one of the first works for harpsichord in electronics in the 1960s. There's Saariaho's Jardin Secret, which I recorded. There's Luc Ferrari's Musique Socialiste which I also recorded. And a number of other works which work with both prerecorded and live electronics and things of that nature. And I like doing that just because I think the electronics and the harpsichord are a pretty happy -- pretty happy marriage actually of media for various reasons. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: But actually in modern music right now, well because of corona they didn't get premiered yet, I had commissioned in the past year three concertos from, there's Miroslav Srnka who is a Czech composer, Paul Rutter is the celebrated Danish composer, wrote me a concerto, and Bent Sørensen wrote me a concerto which I was supposed to be -- I was supposed to be in Norway two weeks ago doing it. But it didn't happen, so it's nice that at least it's there. And you know, there's a few commissions coming up. There's people like, you know, Gavin Bryars, Jinwook Jung is a really interesting-- >> Anne McLean: I saw that. >> Mahan Esfahani: Yeah, he's -- that's going to be super interesting. >> Anne McLean: Yeah, he's interesting. >> Mahan Esfahani: And you know, Jinwook Jung is a young Korean composer. I'm supposed to talk to Hannah Kendall tomorrow about a new piece. So you know, it's because of course composers are interesting people, and you know, their brains are big. I mean, let's be honest, composers have the biggest brains amongst us. So hey, you know, if they have a perspective on the instrument that I might not have, you know, win-win, right? I mean, that's good -- >> Anne McLean: Yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- for me, but actually for the stream performance that I've done for you, these are two fairly classic works. I mean, Andriessen's Overture to Orpheus is already 39 years old. You know, it's not a new piece. And then the two pieces by Martinů are posthumous works which were published after he died, but they may have been written in the 1930s. It's not really clear. But those are -- those are tremendous works because, by the end of the second one, it's clear that he's just breaking the instrument. You know, he's almost making a joke out of it, which I love. >> Anne McLean: So symphonic. >> Mahan Esfahani: Absolutely. Whereas in the Andriessen you feel like he's pulling the expression out of the instrument. And he's, you know, you get a sense that he's sort of, you know, he sort of taps the instrument, and he listens to what it says. And I find that, for lack of a better term, that minimalist approach of Andriessen creates a remarkable tableau of color whereas Martinů is maybe giving a famous hand -- internationally recognized hand expression to the harpsichordist with what he writes, you know. But I love both of these pieces. And, you know, Anne, you know it's 2021 now when we say contemporary music for the harpsichord look the first modern work written for the harpsichord, the major one, is Falla's Concerto 1926. So it's almost 100 years that we have new music for this instrument. >> Anne McLean: Yeah, and your career really spans the spectrum of the harpsichord's existence from the very earliest pieces written for it and obviously the very newest ones. And you've said that interesting music is coming out of Iran, which I -- for the harpsichord. >> Mahan Esfahani: [Inaudible] interesting music. >> Anne McLean: Yeah. And so and I had wanted to ask you about something you said that the harpsichord's existence was questionable in those early days as it is questionable now. And I wondered what you meant by that. >> Mahan Esfahani: Well, actually you know from the Library of Congress's own archives that when Landowska played to -- came to play at the Library of Congress in her first American tour in the 1920s -- Incidentally on that tour, she also played the Poulenc Concerto in Chicago Symphony. When I was at Chicago Symphony playing the Poulenc Concerto, the last person who had been there was Wanda Landowska. So it seems a little odd that, you know, that there would have been that gap. But anyway, as you know for the archives of the Library of Congress, when she came to play at the Library of Congress, she played on the harpsichord. But she also played some works on the piano. And funny enough, it seems that when she played -- I mean, she played a Mozart piano -- piano sonata. Okay, but when she played Bach's Italian Concerto, she played it on the piano. She didn't play it on the harpsichord, which is really weird. Why didn't she play it on the -- >> Anne McLean: It is weird. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- harpsichord? >> Anne McLean: Yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: So you know the piece, even my own teacher, Ruzickova, said that into 1960s that she would be allowed by promoters to put a few pieces on the harpsichord, but they wanted a piano recital. >> Anne McLean: Hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: And so in this, you know, I say it's questionable now, I mean, part of it is rhetorical exaggeration so that I get more commissions written for me, obviously, I mean let's be honest. But now that that's less of an issue, I would say it's questionable in the sense that it has to justify itself. And I think there quite often it has to implicitly justify itself. For instance, there was an article in the New York Times last week about the late harpsichordist, Scott Ross, who died in the 1980s, I think. And you know, it called him a bad boy harpsichordist. I mean, the playing is pretty orthodox, you know, he didn't do anything with new music. He wasn't really interested in it. He played basically Bach and Couperin, you know, but because he wore a leather jacket, oh my God, he was this kind of bad boy harpsichordist, right? And there is an implicit sort of negative stance toward the instrument there as though he had to wear a leather jacket to find some audience for the instrument. And I would say, well, you know, actually we want to listen to the instrument by itself. You know, for every commission I have and, you know, my career has no, fortunately, you know, there's no gaps in it. I mean, I'm very happy with it. But occasionally, you'll have a promoter or, more often, an orchestra programmer for concerto saying, hmm, I don't know, you know, it's an early music instrument. I'm not so sure. And you know, in that sense, it has to -- it's on the defensive in the way that the piano might not be. But you know, Anne, even when you look at the career of Goossens or, you know, Gene Craxton, for example -- Janet Craxton in the U.K. on the oboe, even 50 years ago people didn't take the oboe seriously as a concerto instrument. You know, they didn't take the trumpet seriously as a concert instrument. So -- >> Anne McLean: Yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- you know -- >> Anne McLean: That's true. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- other than the piano and the violin, most instruments have to -- I mean, now we look, you know this as a programmer, we have a generation of amazing cellists. But 50, 60 years ago, how many were there? Not that many. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: So -- >> Anne McLean: Not as soloists anyway, yeah. >> Mahan Esfahani: That's right, not as soloists. And so I think, you know, the way that we can do that. And this is why I purposefully don't interfere with composers. For example, George Lewis wrote me a piece three years ago, which was premiered at the Miller Theater in New York. George Lewis writes really hard music. In a sense, I almost say, hey, it's really not my business. You do what you do. And I do what I do and try to do the best that I can because the instrument needs, you know, I can't curate the voice for the instrument. The composers can do that so that with the benefit afforded by hindsight, we can look back and say that they were all styles applied to the instrument. So I think we have that as commissioners, as programmers, as players, we have that responsibility to not -- to not say that the instrument can do this, but it can't do that. >> Anne McLean: Yeah. It's remarkable to see what you've achieved in this regard. And you've said that you wanted to work so that no one else would be able to say that it's remarkable for a harpsichordist to play modern music on the instrument. And then you have done that. You are doing that every moment. >> Mahan Esfahani: I hope so. We, you know, it's been -- it's been a good 10, 11 years, so let's see what we can do in 30 years. >> Anne McLean: Yeah. You know, too, to finish with the ending of this beautiful program, I was thinking about how you put together the Fischer piece at the very end, the Passacaglia, and how it comes out of and relates to the Overture to Orpheus, the Andriessen which is such a dark and incantatory piece. This word "chthonic" popped into my mind. It's a word I'd never think of. It just popped into my mind when I heard the opening of that piece. As you say, he evokes Orpheus. And I believe that this last piece, the Fischer piece, does have a connection, a delicate connection to the Orpheus myth as well. ^M00:30:43 >> Mahan Esfahani: Yes. >> Anne McLean: Is that right? >> Mahan Esfahani: Well, it comes from a set of suites which are related to the Nine Muses. And this is from, I think, the last of the suites, which is Urani, Urania, or Urania, and well, there's a classical connection, you might say. I went to a lecture when I was in college by Andrew Lawrence-King, the harpist, you know, and the early music harpist. And he talked about Monteverdi's Orfeo and this notion of the kind of, you know, perfect fantastical instrument. And in the case of the Orpheus legend, there's this notion that Orpheus had this lyre that could evoke everything. >> Anne McLean: Mm-hmm. >> Mahan Esfahani: Right? I mean Ovid talks a little bit about this too where when Monteverdi, you know, in Act II of Orfeo, Orfeo goes under -- to the underworld, and there's his famous air where he calls upon the gods and the king of the underworld to let his wife, you know, back, to let his wife out. And we have, you know, the cornetti, and we have the violins. And there's this notion of, you know, sound hits the wall, and then it comes back as this echo, right? But also, what Monteverdi is doing with his continuo grouping which is all the specified and very varied -- very varied, there's a term -- is that in a sense, he's saying that this one instrument, this one imaginary instrument, you know, Lidia Goehr talks about the imagine -- you know, gallery of imaginary works, right? This one imaginary instrument can do and say and express everything. And I think in Fischer's Passacaglia you hear -- you hear the evocation of almost everything. You hear an orchestra. You hear a lute. You hear a harp. You hear a harpsichord for better or worse. You hear the flute. You hear the voice. And I remember Andrew Lawrence-King saying that chaconnes and passacaglias are kind of beauty pageants. You know, every couplet is a sort of -- is a chance for a different aspect of the ensemble or the instrument to shine. >> Anne McLean: It's a beautiful piece. And J.K.F. Fischer is not so well-known, but he was hugely influential. And tell us just one bit about how you place him in the, you know, the history and so on. What's his significance today? >> Mahan Esfahani: Well, actually, J.K.F. Fischer's music was introduced by Landowska. >> Anne McLean: Oh. >> Mahan Esfahani: We know that she performed his music at her last public recital, which was at the Frick Collection in the 1952, 1953. There's a live recording of it where she actually has a memory lapse, and she makes up about half of it, and it's fantastic. And William F. Buckley said in a interview that he was at that recital. Because as you know, Buckley was a great lover -- >> Anne McLean: Yes. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- of the harpsichord and of harpsichord music. And he was himself a harpsichordist. And he said that she, you know, she was quite old and her eyesight was, you know, not what it had been and that she entered this fantastical world with that piece. And certainly, we know that Bach was influenced by Fischer because Bach even quotes themes by Fischer in the Well-Tempered Clavier, I think particularly Book 2 of Well-Tempered Clavier. And you know, Anne, I mean I think this kind of music it helps position a figure like Bach. You know, great man's theory of history is something that's been discarded, or you know, we say that it's been -- it's questioned. And I think with good reason to some extent. But part of looking at what influenced Bach is to remind ourselves that Bach always saw himself in relation to his predecessors. Bach was constantly trying to do as well and to measure up to them. You know, Bach looked up to -- It's hard for us to think about this, but Bach considered his predecessors to be better composers than he was. And he was -- he was trying to do his best for their, you know, you might say their tacit approval or to, you know, that the musical work to some extent represents, you know, an announcement of the artistic self on the part of Bach. And so anything that we can quote and that can give us a view into his musical world will, you know, as Landowska said, will give us hints on how to play his music when he is not offering those hints. >> Anne McLean: You know, it's been wonderful to trace these threads, Bach, Landowska, and the history of composers writing for the harpsichord throughout this conversation. And I'm so pleased it worked out that you were -- >> Mahan Esfahani: Thank you. >> Anne McLean: -- able to do this, you know. I know people will enjoy this concert very, very much. And for us, we wanted to thank you for your friendship with the Library. >> Mahan Esfahani: Thank you. Thanks. >> Anne McLean: You really are a friend. >> Mahan Esfahani: Thank you. You really are a friend too. And look, I mean, we'll get through this. And the first place I want to visit, because my parents live there, is D.C. And you know, I'll come around and, you know, bang pots and pans and -- >> Anne McLean: Wonderful. >> Mahan Esfahani: -- annoy you guys. >> Anne McLean: Yes, we'll continue our path. Okay. >> Mahan Esfahani: We will, yeah. >> Anne McLean: Great. Thank you so much. >> Mahan Esfahani: Okay. See you.