Katia & Marielle Labèque

“The best piano duo in front of an audience today” New York Times

“The Labèque sisters are tremendous. They are great performers, and great interpreters. And they are wonderful supporters of music- not only modern music, but just music. It is great to work with them” Philip Glass

“Whether Mozart or Stravinsky, their musical line always sounds as if it’s being woven for the very first time... But the illusion of improvisation is the genius of their performances. In all their recordings there is a deceptive sprezzatura that is born of throwing the preparation to the winds and hanging onto each others ears.” The Times

Katia and Marielle Labèque are sibling pianists renowned for their ensemble of synchronicity and energy. Their musical ambitions started at an early age and they rose to international fame with their contemporary rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (one of the first gold records in classical music) and have since developed a stunning career with performances worldwide.

They are guests with the most prestigious orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Filarmonia della Scala, Philadelphia Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Marin Alsop, Alain Altinoglu, Semyon Bychkov, Sir Colin Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Gustavo Gimeno, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Louis Langrée, Zubin Mehta, Juanjo Mena, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Matthias Pintscher, Georges Prêtre, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas and Jaap van Zweden.

They have appeared with Baroque music ensembles such as The English Baroque Soloists with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini, Musica Antica with Reinhard Goebel and Venice Baroque with Andrea Marcon, il Pomo d’Oro with Maxim Emelyanichev and also toured with The Age of Enlightenment & Sir Simon Rattle.They are playing with Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini in 2019.

Katia and Marielle have had the privilege of working with many composers including Thomas Adès, Louis Andriessen, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, György Ligeti and Olivier Messiaen. at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles they presented the world premiere of Philip Glass’s new Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. Last spring also saw the world premiere of Bryce Dessner’s concerto at Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and John Storgards. A new concerto written by Nico Muhly ,will be ready in 2020 to be premiered at Lincoln Center with New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden.

The Labèques play in festivals and renowned venues worldwide including the Vienna Musikverein, Hamburg Musikhalle, Munich Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall, La Scala, Berlin Philharmonie, Blossom, Hollywood Bowl, Lucerne, BBC Proms, Ravinia, Tanglewood and Salzburg. An audience of more than 33,000 attended a gala concert with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle at Berlin’s Waldbühne, now available on DVD (EuroArts).A record audience of more then 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 TV.

For their own label, KML recordings, they have released a CD Box « Sisters » . Previous releases include a Gershwin/Bernstein album, and their project Minimalist Dream House (50 years of Minimalist music).The DVD “The Labèque Way, a letter to Katia and Marielle by Alessandro Baricco“ produced by El Deseo (Pedro and Augustin Almodóvar) and filmed by Félix Cábez is released by EuroArts . Their biography "Une vie à quatre mains" by Renaud Machart is published by Buchet-Chastel.

Labèque’s label KML Recordings joined Deutsche Grammophon for distribution of their label , their first collaboration being Stravinsky's “ Rite of Spring” and Debussy's “Epigraphes Antiques” , followed by « Love Stories » with music by Leonard Bernstein and David Chalmin , « Amoria » a journey to their Basque roots including Ravel’s Bolero with basq percussion and « Moondog » a tribute to Louis Thomas Hardin. They just released a new album dedicated entirely to American composer Bryce Dessner, including his Concerto for two pianos with Orchestre de Paris conducted by Matthias Pintscher The album also includes the work El Chan for two pianos, and Haven for two guitars and two pianos. The album is dedicated to the film director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritú , who created the album cover artwork.

This season included performances with New York Philharmonie with Jaap van Zweden, Vienna Konzerthaus with Camerata Salzburg , Elb Philharmonie Hamburg , a European tour with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Semyon Bychkov, Easter Festival Salzburg with Dresden Staatskapelle, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Philharmonie, followed by return visits to New York Philharmonie, Cleveland Symphony, Hollywood Bowl and Cincinatti.

At the invitation of the Philharmonie Hall in Paris in april 2019, attention was focused on their new projects with the creation of a piece written for them by Thom Yorke “Don’t fear the Light”—part of the new program in quartet of Minimalist Dream House with David Chalmin and Bryce Dessner and Thom Yorke as special guest.