AN INTERVIEW WITH MARANIA DUTRES

SHORT STORIES FROM: 50,000 A.D. The Awakening - Henry Matthews from the 21st century wakes up 50,000 years later.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARANIA DUTRES

“Today we have a special interview with Marania Dutres, a former translator for Henry Matthews, who is currently a touring pianist playing ancient music from Mr. Matthews' past. I understand you will be playing later this evening at the Embrias concert hall with a special symphony orchestra that resembles the types Mr. Matthews would have heard back in his ancient time.”

“Yes that’s right. I am especially grateful to be playing this music for the first time in Tulosama. We are all looking forward to this evening.”

“Could you please tell us how you got started playing the piano, and what led you to this change in your career?”

“I first met Henry back at the Manjorian Station about five years ago, just after he was awakened. It was in the lab area when Leo, one of the engineers who was on the restoration board, was showing him around. Later Henry spotted a piacha and starting telling Leo about the ancient piano. Later, they agreed to build one as an extract project for Nervi the Lab engineer. I was already playing the piacha for years and years by then and when I saw this piano, I was totally captivated by it. Eventually, I built up the courage to ask to play it and after I got used to it, there were many advantages over the piacha. Everything was a lot easier when you had to play difficult music. The reason for this is that the keys are half the distance of the piacha and all octaves have the same color key. But it was only easy to a point. The ancient music written for the piano takes its technicalities into account and is extremely difficult to play.”

“The thing that startled me was when I first heard Henry play it; it sent shivers down my spine. The music he played was absolutely beautiful, and I was intrigued by his incredible virtuosity. Most of that music would be difficult or impossible to play on the piacha.”

“As I learned the piano, with help from Henry himself, I was able to confirm that playing ancient Earth music was much more difficult than I had thought it would be. They had proceeded to develop such an incredible music and piano culture in their world that great composers evolved who could compose music that was both extremely difficult and absolutely beautiful.”

“When I first started playing, I thought I could master this instrument in a few weeks, but Henry kept reminding me that if I wanted to go the highest level, it would take years of practice. At first, I thought maybe he doesn’t understand that I’m a C1 clone, and I can achieve objectives a little faster than average. Henry’s world didn’t have our cloning ‘traditions’, and I thought he didn’t understand this. But as the piano lessons continued it became clear he was right. Henry is a piano virtuoso as well, and it took about five years or so before I got up to his level.”

“What music did he play when you first heard him?”

“The first piece of music he played was when Nervi, the engineer who was also a good piacha musician himself, turned out the first iteration of the ancient piano. It had no pedals, so Henry played music from a period of time called the baroque era when they didn’t have these pedals. It was the Italian concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was a fascinating piece. I didn’t know Henry very well then, so I was off to the side in the lab doing some work when he played this for Nervi. At that point, I was totally smitten. I wanted to learn to play this instrument.”

“Next time I heard him play was when I was an employee for his company, and on the first day we all showed up for work at his office. Nervi delivered the final version of what they call a grand piano. The only difference between this one and the ancient ones, is that the best pianos in his time were purely mechanical, and the one Nervi had designed had android technology. It wasn’t practical at the time for Nervi to come up with a mechanical version since they were usually hand-built and that technology wasn’t in our possession. Princess Pamalia showed up to hear him play, so Henry sat at the piano and played for everybody there. He started out with the same Bach piece and went into a brief explanation of the evolution of music over a few hundred years before his birth. The next piece was one by Chopin. It was an incredibly passionate piece set at a fast tempo called the Fantasy Impromptu.”

“He played more pieces by Chopin, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Liszt and Beethoven. He also played some ragtime and jazz. I just sat there off to the side and enjoyed the whole experience immensely. Later on, I got the courage to ask him to show me how to play the instrument, and he gave me permission to play it during off hours. The rest is history.”