Roxanne de Bastion on her book The Piano Player of Budapest

“On the one hand I felt a huge responsibility towards the instrument and was in a perfect time and headspace to do a deep dive into my family history, but to be honest, the idea (for the book) presented itself to me, rather than the other way round,” she tells The Yorkshire Post. “It was really quite magical because this stuff never happens but I posted a tweet really briefly outlining Stephen’s story, posting a photo of him and his piano with something as trite as #InternationalPianoDay, and the next day I had a direct message from my now literary agent saying, ‘This sounds like a fascinating story, have you ever considered writing a book?’ So I said yeah, sure.

“It really did find me and the timing was so perfect, and in a way I didn’t know how much I needed to write a book and tell this story until I had the opportunity to do it.”

Growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon and Germany, Roxanne had “in one way” been “acutely aware” of her ancestry through Stephen’s piano and photographic portraits “which were just so at odds with the rest of my family home – it was always a talking point when people came round”.

“The family had clearly been a very different place both physically and on a social status to generations down, so I was aware that something had gone wrong or awry in the family tree. I knew that my grandad had survived a concentration camp and I knew that there was the story of the long walk through Russia...but the heaviness and the darkness of that clouded the rest of his story, so it really was just an enigma.”

Listening to a series of cassette recordings that Stephen had made shortly before he died helped Roxanne to fill in many of the blanks. She learned that he had grown up in a Jewish family who owned a successful textile business in Budapest; Stephen, however, was determined to become a professional pianist and did so with a degree of success in the 1930s, even writing the music for a film.

However, as anti-Jewish policies came into force during the Second World War, Stephen was sent to do forced labour with 1,000 other men on the Russian front. He was one of only eight to survive, escaping from the front and walking 1,500km across Ukraine before eventually returning home. But when Germany invaded Hungary in 1944, Stephen was sent on a death march with thousands of others to Munchausen concentration camp in Austria. Again, he survived, but Roxanne’s great-grandmother was killed in Bergen-Belsen in Germany.

After Europe liberated by the Allies, Stephen returned to the family home in Budapest. Much of it was ruined, but remarkably his piano survived and 1947, when he emigrated to England, it came with him. However, he was unable to continue his musical career.

Roxanne says that listening to her grandfather’s war story was “no small feat”, adding: “I think it would be emotional for anyone, either relation or no relation. Hearing that kind of survival story in someone’s own words is an incredible experience and I feel very lucky that we have that recording.”

What she also found among the tapes were recordings of Stephen playing piano, which she has shaped into an album with the help of producer Simon Tong, formerly of The Verve, experimental pianist Xenia Pestova Bennett, orchestrator Sally Herbert and singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt. Four songs feature vocals by Roxanne.

“Ever since I started down this journey I have totally different feelings now towards this instrument,” she says of her grandfather’s Blüthner piano. “I’ve always loved it, it’s always been special but now it’s just the most precious thing in the world to me and I feel a huge responsibility to keep it safe and happy. It was really magical hearing his compositions played on that piano, it was so moving, and because I don’t read sheet music, some of the pieces I was hearing for the first time when I was in Berlin with the pianist Xenia Pstova and Simon Tong.

“Firstly, it was very surreal to have Simon Tong in the living room that I grew up in and to have recording gear in there and record an album in that living room, and then I don’t want to personify the piano too much, but I was so happy for the piano that it got to play out those songs again and somehow it felt like being reunified with its master.

“It was a really special moment and Xenia is such an extraordinary player and she really did those pieces justice. It was interesting because she was saying because the keys are so weathered, he played it so much, the piano sort of dictated how to play the pieces, so she really got a sense of his style as well.”

Roxanne de bastion’s book The Piano Player of Budapest is published by Robinson, £22. The album Stephen de Bastion – Songs From The Piano Player of Budapest is available on vinyl, CD and download from Bandcamp.