Katia Labèque

Two pianos have been Katia Labèque's instrument for more than half a century. Taught first by her mother and then at the Paris Conservatoire, she and her sister Marielle have performed the duo repertoire with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta and Gustavo Dudamel. Their biography gives audiences of 33,000 for the Berlin Waldbühne in 2005 and 100,000 for the Schönbrunn summer night concert in 2016. Philip Glass wrote them a Double Concerto, Nico Muhly In Certain Circles; Bryce Dessner, Thomas Adès, Luciano Berio and Thom Yorke have all written or worked with them. Their recordings include Glass's Cocteau Trilogy and Sonic Wires with Dessner and David Chalmin, both released in 2024. A boxed retrospective marking fifty-five years of recording appeared in 2026. She runs the Fondazione KML in Rome. She studied with her mother, the Italian pianist Ada Cecchi, and then with Lucette Descaves at the Paris Conservatoire, where she took a Premier Prix in 1968; the duo's first record, Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen, made under the composer's supervision, was released in 1970. Luciano Berio's Linea, Michael Nyman's Water Dances, Richard Dubugnon's Battlefield, Nazareno by Osvaldo Golijov and Gonzalo Grau and Louis Andriessen's The Hague Hacking were all written for the two of them. In the early 1980s she played in John McLaughlin's band, and she first appeared in Bulgaria with her sister in 2022.