Oslo

Oslo is the destination of Elfrieda Von Riesen’s advanced piano studies and a turning point in her life away from home. The novel presents it through the remembered departure of a gifted seventeen-year-old: a place of musical opportunity that her younger sister could imagine as a permanent separation.

A Destination for Study

At seventeen, Elfrieda left home for Norway to perform a recital and study piano with an elderly teacher she called the Wizard of Oslo. She had finished high school early, at Christmas, earned honours in every subject, received six piano scholarships, and won a Governor General of Canada prize for the highest marks. Oslo thus stands at the meeting point of her extraordinary achievement and her departure from the community in which she had grown up.

The Farewell on the Way to Winnipeg Airport

The city enters the narrative through Yolandi Von Riesen’s memory of the journey to the airport in Winnipeg, where she was eleven and Elfrieda was leaving again, this time for what Yolandi feared would be forever. Their parents sat in front while the sisters rode in the back; outside, fields and snow passed beneath a sky of black ice. Elfrieda wore a white leather choker with a blue bead and an army jacket. When Yolandi asked whether she was never coming back, Elfrieda dismissed the question as stupid. The exchange gives Oslo an emotional meaning beyond its role as a study destination: it is the imagined far side of a childhood goodbye, even though Elfrieda rejects her sister’s prediction.

The Beginning of a Musical Career

Oslo also marks the beginning of Elfrieda’s long professional association with Claudio, who had been her agent since she was seventeen and studying there. Years later, Elfrieda recalled how he first approached her after a concert in Rome, when she was outside the concert hall, smoking, crying, and trembling after performing. He offered to represent her, then travelled to Manitoba to meet her parents and ask their permission. Oslo is therefore linked not only to formal musical training but also to the early professional path that grew from Elfrieda’s performances.