The first one is the charm for Ramon Gener (Barcelona, 1967). With several essays under his belt, the popular musician and cultural disseminator, ideologist of programs such as Òpera en texans or the current Això no és una cançó, has debuted this year in the novel with Historia de un piano (Destino, Columna en Catalán). A book that without further ado has earned him the Ramon Llull award. He had the inspiration at home, right under his nose, hidden in the form of a secret in that piano to which he says good morning since he acquired it 15 years ago under surreal circumstances.
Built in Germany in 1915, that grand piano with an Art Deco design and serial number 31887 is a Grotrian-Steinweg (Steinway in the US) that would push Gener to travel through 20th century Europe imagining its vicissitudes. With prose that flows without hesitation and, according to Gener, without supervision from his editor – “I wrote the book simultaneously in Spanish and Catalan” –, the author recreates the stories of those who caressed the keys of this piano that passed through two wars, on two fronts, for two families that he brings together... and that now rests in Gener's house, in Barcelona.
He is a biographer as well as the owner of the object to be biographed, and this is palpable in the emotional and exciting charge of his novel.
Music is a transcendental fact! Of course there is music to distract, but what works for me is that music makes us better. Music is the only thing that never says no to you, the only thing that will always listen to you. Because the mistake that everyone makes is thinking that they listen to music: it is the music that listens to you! You always need to find the music that listens to you, that tells you who you are and tells you what you are like. The one that when you are sad will sound sad because you need confirmation of your sadness. That's what I'm passionate about.
But you have to be honest with readers: what is invented and what is real in your novel?
There is a lot of truth, more than people will imagine. But where I can't reach, I do as the English would say: “Fill the gap with your imagination”, I fill the gaps with my imagination. That's where fiction comes in, but the core of the research is true.
He invents the pieces with which the young Johannes examines himself at the Leipzig conservatory and the letters he sends to his mother from the front. Did you also invent the fascinating episode in which you bought this piano in Barcelona? The shopkeeper is a mysterious Pole who warns him that it is a very special piano. And he doesn't put a price on it: “What are you willing to pay?” he asks. And you respond: “Everything I have.” And then the store disappears...
It is totally true. Janusz Borowski led me to that piano, he appeared to take me to it, because it was an instrument that met my requirements: to have a different sound and to be destroyed. Furthermore, I had always wanted to have a Steinweg, a piano from those people who came from Germany, who associated with Grotrian and who were from Braunschweig, where they built a factory. The building still exists: in the middle of the pandemic, upon discovering the secret hidden in my piano, I called and asked to visit it. Now it is a space full of graffiti.
Why do biblical similes abound in your prose? There are even chapters written in the strange manner of the Bible.
I was captivated by the idea that music was capable of redeeming the entire disaster of the 20th century. I wanted the comparisons to come from this Judeo-Christian tradition, right? Like the apostles in the garden of Gethsemane, as if trying to find the foundation of things.
You are working on the script for the next season of Això no és una cançó As a popularizer who has broken the mold with classical and opera, do you feel that we have made progress and that this formula has served a purpose?
Every day I receive letters from all over the world, because my programs have been spread all over the planet. People from Korea, Mexico, Colombia, Mongolia... who tell me that, after having seen one of my videos or heard on the radio, they have bought a ticket to go to a concert or the opera. I could have another profile: teaching music in a more academic and strict way, but people with that profile already exist.
