Katia and Marielle Labèque: 55 album review

(Deutsche Grammophon)
The pianist sisters’ celebration of their 55 years of recording is a thoughtfully curated compilation that reveals the extent of their omnivorous musical appetites

In 1969, two teenage students at the Paris Conservatoire recorded Olivier Messiaen’s formidable Visions de l’Amen under the composer’s doubtless nerve-racking supervision. It was released in 1970. Fifty-five years later, Katia and Marielle Labèque’s musical curiosity is undimmed as this handsome three-disc tribute set demonstrates. A mix of new recordings and classics, it reveals the extent of their omnivorous appetites, from 20th-century modernism to minimalism and jazz.

Although best known as a two-piano duo, there’s plenty of four-hands repertoire here, including an iridescent new recording of Le Jardin Féerique from Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye alongside music by Bizet, Fauré (two movements from his Dolly Suite) and a finger-shredding Dance of the Earth from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Works by Gershwin, Bernstein and De Falla are among other highlights.
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