Fight of the day: Mahan Esfahani is back in the wars

The combative harpsichordist has been warned by Damian Thompson in the Spectator that he’s committing career suicide by picking fights.

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?

I have replied with a defence of Mahan:

The point about Mahan is that he will pick a fight in an empty room if he thinks it will make a passing telephone engineer pay attention to the harpsichord. He is determined to push the instrument back to front of stage for the first time in two centuries and if he has to shred a few tinklers to get there, so be it. In a milieu led by tweedy academics in a fine cloud of dandruff, Mahan is a blast of fresh air in a flatulent cloister.

Read the full article here.