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