Katia & Marielle Labèque

Katia and Marielle Labèque have built their reputation on vigorous accounts of music written expressly for two pianos, yet they are perhaps best remembered for the fresh perspectives they bring to an array of existing classical scores. During the 1970s the pair attracted notice by championing twentieth-century figures such as Berio and Ligeti rather than returning repeatedly to Mozart or Schubert; wider recognition arrived in 1981 after their two-piano version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue appeared. Later they broadened their palette by adding percussion to scores by Bernstein and Ravel while also issuing collections devoted to jazz and Spanish song. In 2013 the sisters joined Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies for the first performance of Philip Glass’s Two Movements for Four Pianos; two years afterward they introduced his Double Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra—composed for them—with Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Their initial presentation of Bryce Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos occurred with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2018.

The Labèque sisters were born in Bayonne, in France’s Basque country close to the Spanish frontier. Their mother, a skilled piano instructor born in Torre del Lago, Tuscany—the site of Puccini’s estate—began teaching them when Katia was three and Marielle five; their father, a physician, hailed from Landes. Both later attended the Paris Conservatoire and captured First Prizes there. Fresh out of the Conservatoire in their mid-teens, the siblings turned to contemporary works by Berio, Boulez, and Messiaen, frequently surprising teachers and listeners. Their earliest commercial recording, Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen on Erato in 1970, carried notes from the composer himself. Additional Erato releases throughout the decade featured Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Rachmaninov’s Two Suites for Two Pianos, and music by Hindemith and Martinu.

Worldwide exposure came in 1980 when Philips Classics issued Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue; Piano Concerto in F. The set moved more than half a million copies the following year and gave the fledgling label its initial gold disc in France. Further 1980s projects encompassed the Scott Joplin album Gladrags in 1983, a reading of Gershwin’s An American in Paris in 1984, and Irwin Kostal’s arrangement of West Side Story Symphonic Dances and Songs in 1989. Increased visibility also led to partnerships with the London, New York, and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras.

Sony brought out Love of Colours in 1991, a jazz program containing pieces by Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, and John McLaughlin, who supplied the arrangements. Katia separately recorded Michael Tilson Thomas’s Duos for Guitar and Piano with McLaughlin. Other 1990s releases included ¡España! (Albéniz, Falla, and Lecuona) in 1994 and The Debussy Album in 1997. The sisters took part in Piano Grand!: A Smithsonian Celebration alongside Billy Joel and Dave Brubeck; the event was broadcast and later appeared as a Columbia concert album in 2000.

Subsequent projects revisited Gershwin with I Got Rhythm in 2001 and Ravel in 2007, explored Spanish song alongside flamenco vocalist Mayte Martin on De Fuego y de Agua in 2008, and examined Satie in 2009. Sisters, issued on KML Recordings in 2014, surveyed brief works by more than a dozen composers and should not be confused with the six-disc Deutsche Grammophon box set of the same title released in 2016. Invocations, from 2016, juxtaposed Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with Debussy’s Six Épigraphes Antiques. Early in 2018 Deutsche Grammophon released Love Stories, which returned to West Side Story and introduced David Chalmin’s Star-Cross’d Lovers, a piece drawing on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. That March the Labèques gave the world premiere of Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the London Philharmonic. Amoria, centered on Basque composers, followed in August 2018. Before year’s end they contributed to a full-length Moondog tribute and to Dessner’s El Chan, which presented the first recording of his concerto together with two further duo-piano originals.

Still recording for Deutsche Grammophon, the sisters issued Les Enfants Terribles in 2020, a bespoke adaptation of Philip Glass’s opera recorded in Katia’s private studio.