Whenever piano duos are spoken about, it is the Labèque sisters who spring immediately to mind. Katia and Marielle Labèque return to Prague with the music of Mozart with which they enchanted audiences back in 2016. Schubert’s Symphony No. 2 will also be presented under the baton of Chief Conductor Semyon Bychkov, and the programme will open with a performance by the Czech Philharmonic Brass Ensemble.
Subscription series C
Giovanni Gabrieli (arr. Rolf Smedvig)
Canzon duodecimi toni
Canzon septimi toni No. 2
Canzon VII
Canzon IX
Adriano Banchieri / arr. Rolf Smedvig
Concerto Primo „La Battaglia“
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Concerto No. 10 in E flat major for two pianos and orchestra, K 365
— Intermission —
Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, D 125
Katia and Marielle Labèque pianos
Czech Philharmonic Brass
Robert Kozánek artistic director
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
Historically, choral singing has been an important part of Czech musical life. In the English-speaking world and other countries such as Japan, brass ensembles have enjoyed similar popularity within society. With its Artistic Director Robert Kozánek, the Czech Philharmonic Brass Ensemble will treat listeners to the rich sound world of brass instruments. They have prepared a sample of works from the Venetian early Baroque composer and organist Giovanni Gabrieli. His canzonas will be heard in arrangements by the American trumpeter Rolf Smedvig.
Pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque have already played much of the two-piano repertoire for the public of Prague including new works. This time, they return with the Concerto No. 10 for Two Pianos and Orchestra, which Mozart wrote to play with his beloved sister Nannerl. We do not know whether this ever happened, but later Mozart played the work with his pupil Josepha Barbara Auernhammer, about whom he said: “she plays delightfully but lacks the genuine fine and lilting quality of cantabile; she plucks too much”.
In the case of the Labèque sisters, the concerto is in safe hands. Their superb ensemble playing will be sure to let Mozart’s melodic invention, elegance, and purity shine through. They are also experts in engaging in satisfying musical dialogue and virtuosically merge the sound of two concert grand pianos. And that truly is not an easy discipline:
“We think that the problem for a piano duo is that playing together on two pianos is so difficult that it often leads to a metrical, mechanical kind of playing. If there’s something that we hate with a passion, it’s metrical, didactic, square playing. All our lives, we’ve been looking for balance that lets us perceive music in waves, and not as something vertical. We want to play horizontally even at the cost of sometimes not being perfectly together because that’s not at all important. The main thing is for each musical phrase to speak. All our lives, we’ve been working to achieve a certain freedom of phrasing and joint breathing that lets us play together without having to give each other any signals” – Katia and Marielle Labèque in an interview for Harmonie.
Katia & Marielle Labèque pianos
From the Basque region of France, then almost untouched by classical music, to the greatest concert halls in the world – this is the story of the Labèque sisters with a career spanning more than 50 years, who have been described as “the best piano duo in front of an audience today” (New York Times). But the shared story of the sisters, who have had a lifelong and intense relationship both professionally and personally, is much longer. The elder Katia first began playing piano under the tutelage of her mother, a pianist and piano teacher, and two years younger Marielle soon followed suit. In 1968, they entered the Paris Conservatory, but still as two soloists – the idea of forming a piano duo did not arise until after they had graduated from the conservatory, and so they then enrolled in a chamber music class there. They still remember how, while rehearsing Visions de l’Amen, they were suddenly interrupted by Olivier Messiaen, who happened to be passing by their class and wondered who was playing his piece. He was so impressed that he helped them record the work, which was not only their first recording experience but also an important invitation to the world of contemporary composers – after Messiaen, they worked with György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio. Their career breakthrough came with their original arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which became one of the first gold records of classical music.
The Labèque sisters have performed in famous concert halls from the Musikverein in Vienna to Carnegie Hall in New York, have been guests at major festivals (BBC Proms, Salzburg, Tanglewood) and have appeared with the most celebrated orchestras in the world (Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, La Scala Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, etc.). “We don’t have the huge repertoire of a solo pianist or a violinist, but we have all the more freedom to create our own music and our own projects,” say the sisters, who collaborate with Baroque music ensembles (such as The English Baroque Soloists with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini), but they also venture into the field of “non-artificial” (natural) music (Katia even played in a rock band).
The problem of the limited repertoire for piano duo is also solved by addressing contemporary composers. In addition to the above mentioned, in 2015 they gave the world premiere of Philip Glass’s Double Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. Two years later they premiered Bryce Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos expressly written for them, and recorded it for the album “El Chan”. The Labèques also performed this piece in Prague’s Rudolfinum – although due to the pandemic (2021) without an audience, only in a streamed version. However, this was not the Labèque sisters’ first meeting with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (whose chief conductor Semyon Bychkov is Marielle Labèque’s husband). In April 2017, the Dvořák Hall witnessed their performance of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos, and a year later they made their solo debut there.
Philharmonic Brass
Robert Kozánek artistic director
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Semyon Bychkov conductor
In addition to conducting at Prague’s Rudolfinum, Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic in the 2023/2024 season, took the all Dvořák programmes to Korea and across Japan with three concerts at Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall. In spring, an extensive European tour took the programmes to Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium, and France and, at the end of year, the Year of Czech Music 2024 will culminate with three concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Among the significant joint achievements of Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic is the release of a 7-CD box set devoted to Tchaikovsky’s symphonic repertoire and a series of international residencies. In 2024, Semjon Byčkov with the Czech Philharmonic concentrated on recording Czech music – a CD was released with Bedřich Smetanaʼs My Homeland and Antonín Dvořákʼs last three symphonies and ouvertures.
Bychkovʼs repertoire spans four centuries. His highly anticipated performances are a unique combination of innate musicality and rigorous Russian pedagogy. In addition to guest engagements with the world’s major orchestras and opera houses, Bychkov holds honorary titles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra – with whom he appears annually at the BBC Proms – and the Royal Academy of Music, who awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in July 2022. Bychkov was named “Conductor of the Year” by the International Opera Awards in 2015 and, by Musical America in 2022.
Bychkov began recording in 1986 and released discs with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic for Philips. Subsequently a series of benchmark recordings with WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne featured Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Strauss, Verdi, Glanert and Höller. Bychkov’s 1993 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with the Orchestre de Paris continues to win awards, most recently the Gramophone Collection 2021; Wagner’s Lohengrin was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Year (2010); and Schmidt’s Symphony No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Month (2018).
Semyon Bychkov has one foot firmly in the culture of the East and the other in the West. Born in St Petersburg in 1952, he studied at the Leningrad Conservatory with the legendary Ilya Musin. Denied his prize of conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, Bychkov emigrated to the United States in 1975 and, has lived in Europe since the mid-1980’s. In 1989, the same year he was named Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Bychkov returned to the former Soviet Union as the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor. He was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (1997) and Chief Conductor of Dresden Semperoper (1998).
