The stirring strains of Debussy’s “La Soiree dans Grenada” wafting through the air, immediately captivated me, as I walked through the doors of Nostalgia, 1911 Brasserie at The Imperial, New Delhi.
Sitting at the piano, not just any piano, but a Steinway, was the very handsome Marouan Benabdallah, an acclaimed pianist, and the son of a Moroccan physicist father and a Hungarian musician mother. He calls himself an “heir to the great Hungarian musical tradition”, having trained at the Bela Bartok Conservatory and Franz List Academy in Budapest.
He played with such an effortless ease and lyrical instinct, using tango rhythm and Moorish harmony to paint a picture of Grenada before the spell bound audience, with that piece. It was a performance befitting the legacy of a heritage hotel like the Imperial.
Marouan Benabdallah’s concert which took place in association with Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre, New Delhi was to celebrate the launch of Piano Club on Steinway, at the Imperial. This was the first in a series of sit-down live concerts which the hotel plans to organise, in the months to come, a boon for music lovers surely. Incidentally the Imperial is the only hotel in the country to own a Steinway piano.
Sitting there listening to the compositions of Chopin, Franz Liszt and Rachmaninov, I was suddenly filled with a sense of history. The old world colonial charm of the hotel certainly helped in transporting me back to the days of the Raj. No wonder the restaurant is very aptly named Nostalgia.
The concert was followed by a dinner at 1911 Brasserie, the Classic European restaurant serving traditional European dishes like Steak and Kidney Pie, Yorkshire pudding, Bangers and Mash, Beef Wellington, Wiener schnitzel, Meat Loaf, Sauerkraut etc. Now where does one even get to hear of these classical dishes, leave alone taste them.
The evening was a hark back to the old world ambience which one is so hard put to find these days, the Raj revisited and nostalgia unabashed.
– Lavina Kharkwal