Wikarski Sisters Are Sharing Notes Again

They're back together again.

This month's reunion of Seattle cellist Cordelia Wikarski-Miedel and her pianist sister, Eleonore Wikarski, marks the sisters' first official concert activity as a duo since the cellist's 1977 emigration from East Germany to Seattle.

And there's more than a hint of deja vu in the air, as the duo rehearse for their first U.S. concert together, this Friday at the North Central Washington Museum in Wenatchee (1-664-5989; information, 340-2557). The occasion also marks Eleonore Wikarski's first U.S. performance.

Cordelia's Lake City house is full of the sounds of practicing now, just as the family's Berlin home once rang with the same music. The sisters' father, Romuald Wikarski, was a pianist, composer and professor at Berlin's Academy of Music, and the five young Wikarskis all grew up in an intense musical atmosphere.

The Wikarskis will pay homage to their first teacher in the Wenatchee concert, with four Romuald Wikarski piano pieces on the program (and Schubert's "Arpeggione" Sonata, Debussy's "Estampes" and Cello Sonata, and works of Mozart and Beethoven).

It hasn't been difficult, picking up the lost threads of 14 years in renewing their partnership.

"It's a very nice feeling," says Cordelia, "to be back together again. We work so well together. Eleonore keeps me going straight ahead, right on track. We are good for each other."

Eleonore says she is "very happy to be here" and looking

forward to future concerts with her sister. She returns to Berlin later this summer.

The Duo Wikarski, first-prize winner of the prestigious Munich International Competition, toured together from 1962 to 1977 in the concert halls of Europe, Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, the Middle East and India. Cordelia, winner of the Felix Mendelssohn Award and of prizes at the Pablo Casals Competition and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, taught at East Berlin's Academy of Music. Eleonore, who made her debut as soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as a teenager, established her solo career with some of Europe's leading orchestras and conductors while continuing her duo career on tour and in recording studios.

Early in 1977, Cordelia left East Berlin to join her husband, the late Seattle Symphony Orchestra music director Rainer Miedel, in Seattle. She is a member of the music faculty at the University of Puget Sound.

Many reviewers have commented on the distinct musical personalities of the two sisters. As one German writer put it: "The cellist, Cordelia Wikarski, who compares favorably with all of our top cellists, leans in her powerful tone development more in the direction of an almost obsessed baroque sound. The pianist, Eleonore Wikarski, on the other hand, tries to establish a more restrained classical quality.

"It is precisely the differences of their two styles which complement each other in a way which leads to an amazing unison of technical and musical interpretation."