Stockholm is both a professional stage in Elfrieda Von Riesen’s career and the setting of a revealing memory shared by Elfrieda and Yolandi Von Riesen. During a week-long visit to Sweden, Yolandi accompanied her pregnant sister to a Canadian embassy lunch on the day of Elfrieda’s opening at Stockholm Concert Hall. The city’s formal public settings become inseparable from a private portrait of the sisters: Elfrieda’s poise before others, Yolandi’s discomfort, and the care Elfrieda takes to make her sister feel valued.

Concerts and Connections

Stockholm is where Yolandi met Andras while attending one of Elfrieda’s performances. Later, when Elfrieda says she cannot go on tour, she reminds Yolandi of that encounter and of Andras’s connection to the tour. The reference places Stockholm within Elfrieda’s international performing life, though the recollection does not specify the concert venue or date of Yolandi’s meeting with Andras.

The Embassy Visit

During the visit when Yolandi was pregnant with Will, Elfrieda invited her to join the lunch at the Canadian embassy on the day of her opening at Stockholm Concert Hall. The gathering brought the sisters into a formal setting with the ambassador and other guests. Elfrieda appeared polished and at ease, speaking German with a well-dressed couple, while Yolandi felt out of place and struggled with questions about her writing and what it was like to be the sister of a musical prodigy.

Yolandi’s unease surfaced in small mishaps: reaching for a roll, she knocked over the ambassador’s wine with her stomach; later she wrapped herself in a Manitoba flag for a photograph and pulled its pole over. When an unfamiliar egg dish prompted her to leave the table for the washroom, Elfrieda recognized that she had been crying. These details make the embassy memory less a record of diplomatic occasion than an account of how public scrutiny intensified Yolandi’s sense of awkwardness.

A Sister’s Reversal of Attention

When Yolandi returned, Elfrieda shifted the attention away from her sister’s embarrassment by telling stories that presented Yolandi as brave, adventurous, funny, and exceptionally strong. She described Yolandi’s life as an inspiration for her own piano playing and praised the child Yolandi was carrying. Her praise was exaggerated, as Yolandi understood, but it also expressed a lasting intimacy: Elfrieda knew how to turn a situation in which Yolandi felt judged into one in which she could feel cherished.

Years later, Yolandi recalls the embassy episode while urging Elfrieda to keep her eyes open. The memory prompts Elfrieda to respond, and the exchange briefly renews their familiar bond. Stockholm therefore holds two connected meanings in the narrative: the public world that recognizes Elfrieda as a pianist, and a private sisterly history in which she uses that public attention to defend and affirm Yolandi.