THE PIANO PLAYER OF BUDAPEST

A somber narrative derived from archival work left by a Holocaust survivor portrays an era in Budapest just before and during early World War II.

Singer-songwriter de Bastion is the granddaughter of the protagonist of this book, Istvan Bastyai von Holtzer (later known as Stephen), a Jewish musician and composer who had a fabulous career as a working pianist across Europe before he was sent to German camps after the Nazis invaded in March 1944. Until that year, Hungary was a German ally, which meant that Jews were mostly protected by the pro-Nazi regime, despite their fate elsewhere in Europe. Through cassette tapes the author discovered in the possession of her recently deceased father, she learned that Stephen had narrated his “war story” rather selectively, but the author was able to fill in many other details while researching the history of the era. Stephen was the eldest of four born to a family of nonreligious Hungarian Jews. His father was a wealthy textile entrepreneur, and the family lived in a penthouse apartment in central Budapest, and one of the home’s main focal points was a Blüthner piano. Stephen disdained business, but he became an accomplished pianist for hire—in films, nightclubs, etc.—in Budapest and across Europe. As the author relates, he pursued his passion while “blissfully blinkered” regarding political events until October 1942, when he was summoned to provide forced labor for the Russian war front. Although he managed to survive the horrific conditions, when the Russians broke through, he escaped to Budapest to see his family, only to face deportation to Nazi death camps along with 440,000 Hungarian Jews. De Bastion ably pieces together this poignant tale despite Stephen’s silences, offering a memorable account of family and resilience.

A painfully moving story of how a family piano served as a cherished reminder of long-lost but not forgotten relationships.