Katia & Marielle Labèque

New Concertos

NAZARENO
Philip Glass
BRYCE DESSNER
NICO MUHLY

NAZARENO
OSVALDO GOLIJOV / GONZALO GRAU
For two pianos, percussions & orchestra

I. Berimbao
II.Tambor en Blanco y Negro
III. Guaracha y Mambo
IV. Sur
V. Tormenta y Quitiplá
VI. Procesión

The piece for two pianos, latinos percussions and orchestra is based on "La Pasión Según San Marcos" by Osvaldo Golijov. Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, has been hailed by the New York Times as 'standing the whole world on its ear’. Nazareno was commissioned by "Fondazione KML » and perform with Berlin Philharmonie (recorded for the Digital Concert Hall) , London Symphony Orchestra , Orchestre de Paris,Sidney Opera House with Gonzalo Grau and Raphael Seguinier on percussions.

Upcoming dates

Symphonieorchester des bayerischen Rundfunks
Conductor: Simon Rattle
with: Raphaël Séguinier, Gonzalo Grau
Nazareno

MUNICH, DE
October 3 and 4 2024, 20:00
Münchner Residenz, Herkulessaal

BAMBERG, DE
October 5 2024, 19:00
Joseph-Keilberth-Saal

Golijov: Nazareno for 2 pianos / Labèque · Rattle · Berliner Philharmoniker

Philip Glass
Double Piano Concerto

“Like many people involved in today’s music I have long been an admirer of Katia and Marielle Labèque’s performance of traditional and new concert music for duo pianos. I was very happy to hear their brilliant playing and interpretative skills with my own music – first with the 2007 work, Four Movements for Two Pianos and then, more recently, the Two Movements for Four Pianos.

The work itself follows the three movement form in which many concertos are conceived. However in this case the first and second movements are both fast and the slow movement is the third and last part of the concerto.

Also it seemed that there were enough ‘fireworks’ in the first two movements as to make an additional cadenza for the soloists unnecessary. Again the relationship of the soloist to the orchestra is not the usual one, contrasting the smaller duo with the larger orchestral ensemble. Instead the music of the soloists is shared between the two and the orchestra serves to extend the range and color of the soloists.”
—Philip Glass

Katia & Marielle Labèque - Philip Glass Double Concerto for two pianos

Four Movements

Philip Glass Comes, Finally, To The New York Philharmonic
NEW YORK TIMES
ANTHONY TOMMASINI
26.09.2017

With these performances of the Glass concerto, featuring the splendid pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque as soloists, Mr. van Zweden has filled a gaping hole in the Philharmonic’s history. Overlooking Mr. Glass’s work had to have been a deliberate choice by a succession of music directors, because, love him or hate him, he has been an influential figure in contemporary classical music for some 40 years.

And this 27-minute concerto in three movements, which had its premiere in 2015 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is inventive and unusual. The orchestra starts off abuzz with rippling, subdued riffs. Almost immediately the pianos, backed by various instruments, play a slippery theme in chords that dip and rise almost step by step.

The music is fidgety and full of harmonic shifts, run through with two-against-three rhythms. There’s a mellow, jazzy quality at play: Imagine Gershwin as a Minimalist.

Most concertos have combative passages between the soloist and orchestra. Not this one. The pianists and orchestra are like allies, and that quality persists in the darker second movement, which has long stretches in which two-note motifs keep oscillating and you can’t decide whether the mood is soothing or ominous. The pianists, like trusted guides, take the orchestra (and listeners) through a pulsing thicket of music.

There are moments when what sounds like an echo of that slippery opening theme emerges: The pianos try to catch hold of the tune and pin it down. Mr. Glass ends his concerto with a wistful slow movement. Recurring figures in triplets hover in the pianos, while a sighing, spare melody floats above in bare octaves.

The piano parts, though not showy, are detailed and difficult. The Labèque sisters played a scintillating and elegant performance, and Mr. van Zweden nicely conveyed the mix of sassiness and delicacy in the music.

NY PHILHARMONIC OPENS ITS SEASON WITH MAHLER AND GLASS UNDER THE SURE BATON OF VAN ZWEDEN
CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
25.9.2017

Glass’ Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra(2015, revised 2016) received its New York premiere, featuring the Labèque sisters, for whom it was written. It’s an attractive and absorbing piece, with more event than you might expect, and far more in the way of external reference than Glass usually gives away: I felt the Ravel G-major concerto whispering behind the second movement, and the slow wind-down of the opening movement distinctly evokes Shostakovich, whom Glass greatly admires. The Labèques played it with absolute commitment and beauty of tone, and van Zweden conducted with real feeling, so that it came over with moment-by-moment inflections that often go missing in more poker-faced specialist readings.

Bryce Dessner
double piano concerto

The double piano concerto is one of the pieces I’m most proud of, that I wrote a few years ago now for Katia and Marielle Labeque who are these incredible pianists, really unbelievably talented. We shared a concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2015, and during rehearsals, they asked me if I ‘d ever consider writing something for two pianos. This piece was this amazing journey of learning about their history. They’ve worked with everyone. They were discovered in the Paris Conservatory as teenagers by Olivier Messiaen, and they worked directly with him. Luciano Berio was very close to them and wrote music for them. They’ve kind of come through every era of all this important music , they bring a level of attention and dedication to music that I’ve not witnessed before.It’s a whole level of intensity and dedication with this piece, There’s a shared soul in their music, it’s so powerful. Two pianos It’s this big, powerful sound with so many colors you can play with.There are things in each of their parts that call out the things they like doing, it’s a very personal piece.

The effect of Dessner’s 2017 concerto for and about the Labeque sisters was markedly different. After that, one wasn’t so much enraptured as in shock and awe.Dessner, a polymath equally adept in the worlds of film, concert, and popular music, has penned a thrilling 20-minute work that showcases the sisters in all their glory, one that calls for their unique brand of delicacy as well as their steely ferocity and great virtuosity.

At times, it had all the gossamer beauty of a Debussy Prelude. At others, the thrashing aggression of a rock anthem.A short, robust motif was omnipresent as the sisters took turns sharing lyrical ruminations or whipping up tempests and interrupting each other with sharp barks and growls. Gimeno, too, kept up the pressure, conjuring blistering percussion and a spectrum of orchestral colors.

Excerpt from an article by Janelle Gelfand – Cincinnati Business Courier
May 4, 2024

"Dessner tailored the piece to the virtuosity of these sibling pianists. Astonishingly, they have been performing and adding to the duo-piano repertoire for more than 50 years. The performance was a slightly reduced version, he said.
It was wonderful to hear this concerto again. The pianists plunged energetically into the concerto’s keyboard-spanning runs and flourishes that open the concerto. Dessner created a stunning soundscape of orchestral textures against the powerful piano figures played by the duo pianists, Katia Labèque once even lifting herself out of her seat for a bigger attack. But there were ravishing moments, as well, and the movement closed quietly with the pianists in a lyrical dialogue. The slow movement, with its delicate repeating tones in the piano and minimalist writing for orchestra, was beautifully atmospheric.The last movement was brilliant, driving and percussive, with a brief pause for a cadenza of lush chords and simple melody before soaring to a splashy finish.) Wiley was an excellent partner, and once again, listeners were on their feet."

CINCINNATI, US
May 3 2024, 20:00
CSO
Louis Langrée, conductor
Bryce Dessner Double Piano Concerto

read the full article here >>

@leongjp

“Bryce Dessner’s evocative Concerto for Two Pianos a strong claim as the evening’s centerpiece...
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...an evocative, neatly conceived work Dessner throws all manner of writing at the pianists, who play cascading figures in canon, stuttering syncopations, gently articulated polyrhythms, jabbing chords and twinkling starbursts of notes. the Labèque sisters played with typical precision, carving out figures from the orchestral fabric with a scalpel. They found flair in clarity; long-breathed lines flowed evenly, and the interplay between the piano parts had athletic grace. They make collaboration sound like an instinctive mind meld.”
—New York Times By Oussama Zahr Dec. 1, 2023

Semyon Bychkov, Katia and Marielle Labéque and the New York Philharmonic
© Chris Lee

“The Labèque sisters are superstars in the world of duo piano, and Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos relishes dissonance and tension, and dances with a visceral rhythmic playfulness ….”
—CADENZA

“A bracing Dessner Concerto the piano duo of Katia and Marielle Labèque, going strong more than 50 years into their performing career, teamed up with a youngish composer who is literally a rock star in Dessner’s Two-Piano Concerto,…..”
—NEW YORK CLASSIC REVIEW

“Bryce Dessner’s 2017 Concerto for two pianos, composed for – and performed here in its New York premiere by – the legendary duo Katia and Marielle Labèque, is a terrific piece of music, engaging and appealing...
... a showcase for its soloists. Dessner gave the Labèques challenges ranging from ghostly half-pedaled memories to repetitive grooves and violently physical chordal attacks...”
—BACHTRACK

“Dessner is an important composer with a developed technique and an intense emotional voice. He continues today as a major voice of his generation.”
—Steve Reich

“Indie rock’s preeminent classical composer offers a selection of piano pieces from minimal, to rousing, to a heroic concerto for two pianos backed by a full orchestra.”
—Pitchfork

“Dessner creates suspense because he repeatedly emphasises the mood or lets the pulse of the melody follow . This results in amazing effects, even during the Tutti with the barely audible violins.”
—Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

“You marvel at his ability to bleed pigments into each other, like a watercolourist.”
—Financial Times (World première with London Philharmonic Orchestra (April 2018))

“His capacity to propel energy is just as effective on the classical podium.”
—Sächsische Zeitung (German premiere with Dresdner Philarmonie, June 2018)

NICO MUHLY
"In Certain Circles"
For Two Pianos & Orchestra

In Certain Circles is in three movements. The first contains a little fragment of a piece by Rameau, l’Enharmonique. The movement is about uncovering it through various disguises and lifting of those disguises. From time to time, the tune from the Rameau appears and quickly vanishes; while it’s not always meant to be fully audible, there should be a sense of l’hantologie here, where the simple intervals of the Rameau permeate the texture in oblique and sometimes obscure ways. A very simple gesture permeates all three movements: a rising second, forcefully declared by the brass in the very first bar; the brass often insists on these intervals even when they antagonise the pianos.

The second movement is a pair of dance-suite movements: a sarabande and a gigue. I tried to call on my knowledge of French baroque music to make something I’ve never done before, which is to say, music which more or less obeys the rhythmic rules of a received form. Here, the piano go in and out of rhythmic unison with one another — a little mechanical, a little expressive. While the sarabande is quite supple, the gigue is explicitly mechanical and a bit unstable. The normal sets of 6 and 12 beats are oftentimes interrupted with unwelcome little hiccoughs of 4 or 5 beats, creating a sense of anxiety despite the explicitly diatonic harmonies.

The third movement begins with the pianos in completely different rhythmic worlds from one another. ‘Disconnection’ is the guiding musical principle here; the music shifts quickly from very dark to very bright, from jagged rhythms to simple quavers and semiquavers, and from delicate to quite violent. Every playful moment is offset by something severe or mechanical. After a relatively joyful pulse-based episode, we perceive a final spectre of l’Enharmonique and the movement ends abruptly. In Certain Circles is dedicated to Katia and Marielle Labèque.

—Nico Muhly

NICO MUHLY—BIO

Nico Muhly, born in 1981, is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, chamber music and sacred music. He’s received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera: Two Boys (2011), and Marnie (2018); Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, Wigmore Hall, the Tallis Scholars, King’s College and St John’s College, Cambridge, among others. He is a collaborative partner at the San Francisco Symphony and has been featured at the Barbican and the Philharmonie de Paris as composer, performer, and curator. An avid collaborator, he has worked with choreographers Benjamin Millepied at the Paris Opéra Ballet, Bobbi Jene Smith at the Juilliard School, Justin Peck and Kyle Abraham at New York City Ballet; artists Sufjan Stevens, The National, Teitur, Anohni, James Blake and Paul Simon. His work for film includes scores for for The Reader (2008) and Kill Your Darlings (2013), and the BBC adaptation of Howards End (2017).

Among his concerti are works for violin, (Shrink, for Pekka Kuusisto), organ (Register, for James McVinnie), viola (Nadia Sirota), two pianos (In Certain Circles, for Katia and Marielle Labèque) and his vocal collaborators include Iestyn Davies, Renée Fleming, and Nicholas Phan. He has collaborated with visual artists Maira Kalman and Oliver Beer, and has created site-specific pieces for the National Gallery, London, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and written articles for the Guardian, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books. Recordings of his works have been released by Decca and Nonesuch, and he is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008).

Nico Muhly’s « In Certain Circles »
“a freedom born from confidence”
—NY Times
April 28, 2022
Full article HERE

“A concerto for two pianos and orchestra, “In Certain Circles” was written for the sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque, who performed the world premiere in Paris last year and returned to the work with New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall...”

“Muhly became classical music’s darling. He worked with Philip Glass and Björk. There were profiles in the media and plenty of commissions, including the film score for “The Reader,” and a full-scale opera, all by the time he was 30 years old.”

“In Certain Circles” is something more. It’s moody too, but there’s a freedom born from confidence that makes it satisfying. Muhly develops musical ideas ….like Debussy, he seems motivated by the sounds of the instruments themselves. They tell him where to go.”

“The Labèque sisters favor rhythmic precision and quick, sharp action —a solid way to achieve clarity in the double piano repertory — and they use dynamics to define phrases.”