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Mein 1969, two young students at the Paris Conservatoire wrote Olivier Messiaen’s haunting Visions de l’Amen under the singer’s unmistakable direction. It was released in 1970. Fifty-five years later, Katia and Marielle Labèque’s passion for music has not changed as the beautiful collection of three discs shows. A mix of new and old recordings, it reveals the breadth of their passions, from 20th-century to minimalism and jazz.
Although known as a two-piano duo, there’s plenty of four-hand music here, including a 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 the finger-cutting Dance of the Earth from Stravinsky’s Rite Stravinsky. Works by Gershwin, Bernstein and De Falla are among the most important.
French music is led by the raucous record of Debussy’s Fêtes as recorded by Ravel and the classic Clair de Lune in Dutilleux’s two-piano composition. Music by female singers, many newly recorded, is also welcome, including Fanny Mendelssohn and Lili Boulanger, as well as tangy tunes from Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, stunning Nocturne by Croatian composer Dora Pejačević and spiritual boogie-woogie by Margaret Boogie.
New music was their first love, however, there is a feast here, from 20th century artists such as Berio and Cage to the meditations of Arvo Pärt, music for the films of Philip Glass, whose work they have been struggling with for a long time, and Bryce Dessner, whose Basque-inspired Goiza Larrunen is well known. Finishing where it began, the Messiah’s Amen de la Consommation database includes a selection of well-chosen collections.
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