Three Movements for Six Hands

At nineteen years, Johannes Brahms was a beautiful youth with delicate hands and slender fingers that belied their strength, a clear tenor singing voice, a smooth, beardless face and a slight build. Women swooned over his rich and beautiful head of golden blond hair that flowed down to his shoulders and framed his pale blue eyes, giving him an aura of innocence. Although he was not a tall boy, he stood straight and upright, and looked people in the eye when he talked, giving him an air of authority.
Clara Schumann's hazel eyes shined brightly in direct opposition to the dark circles below them. Her wide mouth radiated an air of sensuality and her high cheekbones gave her confidence and competence Brahms had never seen in a woman before, and yet he was reminded of his mother, a younger version, as he remembered her from his youth. It seemed clear somehow that this woman had borne children, although he could not say why he thought that. Perhaps a fullness of the hips or her supreme confidence. At the same time, because of her directness, she reminded him of the women he had known by the docks of Hamburg.

TERRY ROW is the award-winning author of Summer Capricorn (2006), Untarnished Reputation (2009), which received an Honorable Mention in the Genre Category at the 2009 Hollywood Book Festival and took the top prize in the Western Category at the National Indie Excellence Awards of 2010, and Phyllis Marie (2011), which won an NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, Best Book in the Category of Fiction, Spring of 2011. His newest book, Three Movements for Six Hands, an historical novel about the composers and pianists Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann arrives for the 182nd anniversary of Brahms's birth, May 7, 2015.

In addition to his work as a novelist, Terry Row teaches writing and edits manuscripts for other novelists. He lives in northern Santa Barbara County with his wife, ceramics artist Ramona Clayton and manages retail sales for her pottery business, terramonary porcelain dinnerware. He remains a lifelong avocationist, pursuing independent studies in writing, literature, poetry, music, history, cinema, photography, eclipse-chasing, astronomy, gardening, chess and bird watching.