The Labèque sisters, Katia (born 11 March 1950) and Marielle (born 6 March 1952), are an internationally known French piano duo.

Katia and Marielle were both born in Bayonne, on the southwest coast of France near the Spanish border (Northern Basque Country). Their father was a doctor, rugby football player and music lover. He sang in the Bordeaux Opera choir. The sisters' first teacher was their Italian mother, Ada Cecchi (a former student of Marguerite Long), who began lessons when her daughters were three and five years of age. Upon graduation in piano from the Conservatoire de Paris in 1968, the two began working on piano four hands and two pianos repertoire. They recorded their first album Les Visions de l'Amen of Olivier Messiaen under the artistic direction of the composer himself. They then undertook performance of contemporary music, performing works by Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Philippe Boesmans, György Ligeti and Olivier Messiaen.

While some degree of recognition came with this performance repertoire, their true celebrity arrived when their 1980 two-piano recording of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue sold over a half million copies. Beyond the traditional classical repertoire, their repertoire extends to contemporary classical music, jazz, ragtime, flamenco, minimal music, baroque music on period instruments, and even pop music and experimental rock.

They discovered baroque music with Marco Postinghel and commissioned the construction of two Silberman fortepianos in 1998. They played these instruments with Il Giardino Armonico conducted by Giovanni Antonini, Musica Antiqua Köln conducted by Reinhard Goebel (Johann Sebastian Bach commemoration year in 2000), the English Baroque Soloists conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Venice Baroque Orchestra conducted by Andrea Marcon, and with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

They performed for 33,000 people at the Waldbühne gala concert, the last concert of the 2005 season of the Berlin Philharmonic., and for more than 100,000 people in May 2016 at Schönbrunn Palace with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Semyon Bychkov.

Many works have been written especially for them, such as "Linea" for two pianos and percussion by Luciano Berio, "Water Dances" for two pianos by Michael Nyman, "Battlefield" for two pianos and orchestra by Richard Dubugnon, "Nazareno" for two pianos, percussion and orchestra by Osvaldo Golijov and Gonzalo Grau, "The Hague Hacking" for two pianos and orchestra by Louis Andriessen, "Capriccio" by Philippe Boesmans, "Concerto for two pianos and orchestra" by Philip Glass performed in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. ...

Source: Article "Katia and Marielle Labèque" from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

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