KATIA AND MARIELLE LABÈQUE  

Katia and Marielle Labèque are sibling pianists renowned for their musical synchronicity and energy. Their talents became evident at an early age, and they came to international attention with their rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (one of the first gold records in classical music).

They are regular guests with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Dresden Staatskapelle, Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Marin Alsop, Semyon Bychkov, Gustavo Dudamel, Gustavo Gimeno, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Pietari Inkinen, Louis Langrée, Zubin Mehta, Andres Orozco-Estrada, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Matthias Pintscher, Simon Rattle, Santtu Matias Rouvali, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas and Jaap van Zweden.

An audience of more than 33,000 attended a gala concert with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle at Berlin’s Waldbühne, now available on DVD (EuroArts), and a record audience of more than 100,000 attended the Vienna Summer Night Concert in Schönbrunn (now available on CD and DVD by Sony). More than 1.5 million viewers followed the event worldwide on television.

The Labèques’ own label KML Recordings joined Deutsche Grammophon in 2016.

They have worked with many composers including Thomas Adès, Louis Andriessen, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, György Ligeti and Olivier Messiaen. At the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles they presented the world premiere of Philip Glass’s new Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. 2019 saw the world premiere of Bryce Dessner’s concerto at London’s Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and John Storgards.

At the invitation of the Philharmonie Hall in Paris for a special weekend, attention was focused on their new project for two guitars and two pianos with David Chalmin and Bryce Dessner, including a piece written for them by Thom Yorke, Don’t Fear the Light, with Yorke as special guest. In 2021 they gave the premiere of Nico Muhly’s concerto In Certain Circles with the Orchestre de Paris and Maxim Emelyanichev, performing it again in 2022 with the New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden. Another recent highlight was a tour with the Filarmonica Joven de Colombia conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, through Germany, Austria and Holland. Their project Electric Fields, with Barbara Hannigan, was premiered at Disney Hall followed by concerts at Aix-en-Provence and the Elb Philharmonie Hamburg. The Trilogie Cocteau/Glass has been performed in Paris, Bordeaux, Metz, Dublin and London’s Barbican.

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