Cocido y violonchelo

Mercedes Cebrián decides to learn to play the cello at an age when, apparently, it is too late to be a beginner. She thus embarks on a curious adventure carrying on her back an instrument that is not very popular in Spain, which takes her from music academies and amateur orchestras to luthiers' workshops that smell of freshly cooked food. The author investigates the nature of music, while she observes with a magnifying glass and caustic sense of humor a small world where fledgling talents parade or amateurs who struggle to get a good sound from their instruments. And along the way she invites us to stroll through an idealized mental Russia, with its virtuoso instrumentalists and gymnasts, through the strange underworld of child prodigies exposed on the networks by their mothers, or through traditional inns that serve traditional dishes; from post-Franco Spain to the pandemic, in which, for many, spending hours dusting off an old hobby has been vital to maintaining sanity.