Katia and Marielle Labèque: 55 — a handsome three-disc tribute

In 1969 two teenage students at the Paris Conservatoire recorded Olivier Messiaen’s formidable Visions de l’Amen under the composer’s 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 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.

French music is foregrounded with a boisterous account of Debussy’s Fêtes as transcribed by Ravel and a poised Clair de Lune in Dutilleux’s two-piano transcription.

France, Paris

katia labèque, marielle labèque, messiaen, ravel, debussy, stravinsky, fauré, gershwin, two-piano, three-disc