‘55’ – Katia & Marielle Labèque (DG)

For more than half a century, pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque have held a distinctive place in the musical landscape. Celebrated for the brilliance and precision of their ensemble playing, they have also pursued a career marked by an unusually wide-ranging curiosity. From Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Ravel to Stravinsky, Messiaen, Philip Glass and Bryce Dessner – and far beyond the conventional boundaries of classical music into jazz, minimalism and popular culture – the Labèque sisters have consistently resisted being confined by repertoire, genre or expectation.

Their latest release, 55 (released in June 2026), celebrates an extraordinary 55 years of recording. It features a collection of 25 newly recorded tracks, including several world premiere recordings, plus 30 drawn from an impressive archive spanning 1970 to 2024. The result is not a conventional career retrospective but rather a fascinating survey of the repertoire, composers and ideas that have shaped the sisters’ artistic lives.

The story begins and ultimately comes full circle with Olivier Messiaen. Katia and Marielle were just 17 and 19 when Messiaen asked them to record his monumental two-piano work Visions de l’Amen, himself overseeing the recording. More than five decades later, the final track of 55 returns to that beginning with the work’s concluding Amen de la Consommation. It is an eloquent way to close the circle, reminding us how deeply contemporary music has been embedded in the Labèques’ artistic identity from the very start.

There are familiar works for piano duo and piano 4-hands – by Debussy and Ravel, Dvorak and Bizet, Brahms and Fauré – but alongside these sit the experimental and minimalist worlds of Luciano Berio, Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, John Cage, Howard Skempton and Bryce Dessner, before returning, via Stravinsky, to Messiaen.

55 is organised in three sections – Wild is the Wind, Of a Bright Garden and Points of Light – moving freely across musical periods and styles; for example, Nina Simone’s Wild is the Wind, heard in a transcription for two pianos and played with a relaxed expansiveness, sits alongside Margaret Bonds and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. 

It is good to see an emphasis on women composers, including works by Hélène de Mongeroult, Grażyna Bacewicz, Dora Pejačević, Margaret Bonds and Lili Boulanger. For Katia and Marielle Labèque, bringing these voices into the collection is not merely an exercise in historical correction but part of the same spirit of curiosity that has always driven their music-making: a desire to seek out connections, contrasts and repertoire worth hearing.

Above all, 55 reveals remarkable artistic continuity. Across recordings separated by decades, one hears the qualities that have long distinguished Katia and Marielle Labèque: rhythmic vitality, clarity, colour, imagination and an almost instinctive understanding of one another at the keyboard. At the heart of this collection is the wonderful sense that these two musicians remain as inquisitive and adventurous as ever – still discovering music, still making connections and still asking where two pianos and four hands might take them next.

55 is available on Deutsche Grammophon

FW