A performance hundreds of years in the making bring cherished piano, violin together

A piano and a violin - separated by the horrors of Nazi Germany - are once again reunited.

They're both inside a home in north Raleigh, existing as a tribute to the harrowing experience of two talented sisters and their family. A bittersweet tale lies at the heart of how these instruments went from tragedy to harmony.

Together again. Keys and strings. Majesty and melancholy.

When the music plays, the Wilczynski sisterhood is back: Grete on a 1905 piano; Natascha on a 1792 violin.

It is the 1930s in Munich, Germany. These sisters from a Jewish family dazzle concert audiences with their duets.

But the Nazis are in power. The music died.

The grandmother and great aunt of Tony Morcos would never play together again.

"My grandmother and my great aunt were a piano-violin duo," Morcos said.

For Natascha: "She escaped Germany in 1935," Tony said.

She went to Italy, then France, where she gave her brother her treasured Zwerger violin.

"She was either arrested or turned herself in, in a roundup of the Jews."

To pay for her freedom, the family sold the violin bow's decorations: the mother of pearl, the gold, the ivory.

In August 1942, this violin virtuoso was in a concentration camp - Auschwitz - never to be heard from again.

"My grandmother gave them everything they left behind in the apartment, which was everything," said Grete.

Everything to get her piano from Munich to Jerusalem, the city where she sought refuge. Everything, for she had escaped with only her clothes. In 1956, she and her husband emigrated to New York City.

"And they were able to bring the piano with them this time."

And Morcos's mother, who emigrated two years earlier, was able to bring the violin. It sat, forgotten, in a closet for decades -- until he restored it in 1991.

"When I got that violin restored, I said I need some closure. I need that piano back. I want it back."

Alas, the piano had been sold in 1986. And the owner had no desire to give it up.

Not until 2015. Morcos, of course, bought it.

"It was a victory," he said. "It was like, ok, I got both instruments. but now we've got to do one more thing for my mom."

One more thing: A concert, in his home, for his mother, Ruth, marking her 90th birthday.

"She needs to hear those instruments played together before she dies."

Jackie Wolborsky of the North Carolina symphony played the violin. Mimi Solomon, a chamber musician, played the piano.

"There's something about touching that instrument and hearing the sound that comes out of it that kind of transports me back to a different moment,"Solomon said.

"Every time I play it, I get the chills," Wolborsky said.

"It makes me cry every time," Morcos said.

Keys and strings. Beauty and grace. Together again.

During that home concert, Marcos's mother heard the piano and violin together for the first time since she was a child. She passed away last year at the age of 96.