Martín Llade presents this afternoon The Razumovsky Mystery, his second novel, in the La Madriguera bookstore. The composer Ludwig van Beethoven stars in a work where he acts as an amateur detective. The murder of a maid in the palace of Razumovsky, the composer’s patron and Russian ambassador in Vienna, illuminates a plot of mystery that shakes the capital of Austria in 1814, the date of the Congress of Vienna.
Beethoven’s investigations lead to a spiral of murder attempts and crimes around the Razumovski house that may have their origin “in the political struggle of the victors against Napoleon or in the count’s own past,” Llade emphasizes.
The author joins the “fashion” of the historical thriller. The appearance of detective novels that transform the biography of their famous protagonists is a literary resource that is accepted by many readers. An important part of the most recent fiction production “turns famous people like Gonzalo de Berceo and Miguel de Unamuno into detectives”, two unlikely investigators of events if we look at their real avatars.
“Why not Beethoven,” Llade asks. «I think we have a path to explore that can make readers who are music lovers become interested and those people who are not familiar with classical music suddenly enjoy historical recreation, police plots and learn and get closer to these. music figures.
To each chapter of The Razumovsky Mystery and there are eighty of them, it is accompanied by a piece of music by Beethoven that can be found on a Spotify list selected by the author of the novel.
Llade’s Beethoven, deaf as the great composer became, “can read lips.” In addition, “it identifies the nationality of people by their walking rhythm.” The German is not the only musician present in the book; Other famous composers such as Antonio Salieri, Franz Schubert and Louis Spohr also appear.
In addition, personalities such as the Russian Tsar Alexander I, Emperor Francis of Austria, King Frederick William III of Prussia, and other princes, princesses and nobles were present at the Congress of Vienna. Likewise, the text refers to the Spanish ambassador of Ferdinand VII in Vienna, Pedro Gómez Labrador.
NEW YEAR CONCERT. Llade has been, since 2018, the voice of the New Year’s Concert in Spain, “the most watched broadcast on January 1” as its presenter on public television recalls. It is a “very established” tradition, but in recent years, and encouraged by virtual conversation, it has renewed this condition.
«I see that, suddenly, there is movement on social networks: there is talk, although many people, perhaps, do not listen to more concerts during the year. But he makes his contribution,” Llade proclaims.
