The Brahms Bust - Comini, Alessandra

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Résumé :
After visiting the nineteenth-century German/Texan sculptor Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin, art crimes detective Professor Megan Crespi identifies an unknown bust of the young, beardless Johannes Brahms in a local antique store, and happily acquires it. Two days later she speaks on Brahms and the Visual Arts in his birth city of Hamburg. She continues to Vienna where she is to lecture on Gustav Klimt and Music and attend a controversial concert series that juxtaposes Austrian-born Anton Bruckner symphonies with those of German-born Brahms. As partisans bicker, the conductor Agatha Endlich encounters growing threats with violent consequences. Suspects include conductors Brahms-lover Lukas Eifer and Bruckner-fanatic Christian Begeist as well as their devious cohorts. Descendants and ancestors of the world-famous Wittgenstein family of Vienna play a role. After the revelation that Brahms produced a secret work in a genre totally unassociated with him, Megan attempts to discover the score that has been hidden for over one hundred and fifty years. Will she be successful? Includes Readers Guide.

Biographie:
Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, Alessandra Comini was awarded Austria's Grand Medal of Honor for her books on Viennese artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Her Egon Schiele's Portraits was nominated for the National Book Award and her The Changing Image of Beethoven is used in classrooms around the country. Both books in new editions are now available from Sunstone Press as well as The Fantastic Art of Vienna, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Schiele in Prison. Comini's travels, recorded in her memoir, In Passionate Pursuit, extend from Europe to Antarctica to China and are reflected in her Megan Crespi Mystery Series: Killing for Klimt, The Schiele Slaughters, The Kokoschka Capers, The Munch Murders, The Kollwitz Calamities, The Kandinsky Conundrum, The Mahler Mayhem, The Beethoven Boomerang and The Brahms Bust. All Comini's scholarly books are available in new editions from Sunstone Press as is the entire Megan Crespi Mystery Series.