Canone inverso

In an isolated Austrian music school in the 1930s, two boys, each struggling with the burden of talent, the curse of obsession, and the forces of history ranged against them, become locked in a complex friendship. One is a Hungarian bastard peasant boy touched by brilliance, the other the sole heir to an Austrian aristocratic family desperately clinging to the prerogatives of noble birth. The key to their bond lies hidden in the secret of a beautiful, strangely carved violin. As their lives unfold through the most violent decades of our century, the two become companions, rivals, and, inevitably, lethal enemies.