1. Home
2. Culture
3. A Duo, Two Pianos, a Thousand Emotions: The Labèque Sisters Enchant Abu Dhabi

On April 16, 2025, as part of the 22nd edition of the Abu Dhabi Festival, the Labèque sisters gave a four-hand piano recital at the Red Theater of NYU Abu Dhabi. Before an attentive and moved audience, they delivered a program structured like a triptych narrative, blending the imagination of fairy tales, the memory of cinema, and the power of musical writing.

For the 22nd edition of the Abu Dhabi Festival, at the Red Theater of NYU Abu Dhabi, Katia and Marielle Labèque captivated the audience. Their recital wove a striking dialogue between Glass and Cocteau, with Ravel as a musical bridge. The evening opened with Glass’s La Belle et la Bête, its hypnotic motifs unfolding across two pianos, followed by Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye in its original four-hand version—a spellbinding interlude at the heart of the program. After the intermission, Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles brought the evening full circle, seamlessly merging these artistic worlds into a near-cinematic experience.

From the first measures of La Belle et la Bête, the Labèque alchemy took hold. Two bodies, four hands, one breath. Glass’s minimalist world, with its crystalline motifs and subtle repetitions, wove itself into the narrative arc of the filmed tale. One hears the mirror, feels the garden, almost sees the pavilion and the final metamorphosis. The pianists offered the audience a kind of screenless cinema, where music summons mental images.

With Ma Mère l’Oye, they transformed the hall into another dream – gentler, more childlike. From Tom Thumb to Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, each movement was painted with crystal-clear grace. Nothing forced, nothing showy. Ravel was played here with full poetic subtlety, with a tenderness fitting for childhood recollections. After the intermission, Les Enfants Terribles opened with a quiet tension. This final part of Glass’s trilogy inspired by Cocteau gives musical form to the destructive fusion between Paul and Lise, two teenagers locked in their fantasies. Through their instruments, the Labèque sisters embodied the blurred line between dream and reality. Performance became theater, theater became vertigo. Themes tangled. The world warped like an unresolved childhood memory.

A Radiant Vitality

But what made the concert unforgettable – beyond the musical performance – was the luminous energy they radiated. Katia and Marielle Labèque danced with the keys, lived every measure, and infused the stage with a rare vitality. During the concert, the rules of the hall were strictly observed: no photos, no unnecessary movement, an almost sacred atmosphere of reverence. But at the post-recital cocktail, the mood shifted – turning into a joyful, spontaneous tone. There, the Labèque sisters revealed themselves as warm, curious, generous. We learned that one of them adores cats – an unexpected shared interest for many guests. The conversation naturally shifted toward Lebanon, where we are from – having traveled specifically to cover this concert – and then to music and life’s coincidences. In just a few exchanges, the seriousness faded, humanity took over, and the music lived on in voices, smiles and newfound bonds.

An Art of Suspension

By opening and closing the evening with two Philip Glass pieces inspired by Jean Cocteau, the Labèque sisters placed their recital under the sign of duality and reflection. Through La Belle et la Bête and Les Enfants Terribles, they explored two ways of loving: transformative beauty and ravaging obsession. In between, Ma Mère l’Oye acted as an enchanted interlude, a breath of childhood. The selection of works also carried a subtle but powerful reflection on time: the time of fairy tales, the suspended time of childhood, the cyclical time of memory. In this way, the concert echoed — less through direct kinship than through resonance — the film Prodigieuses, which portrays two pianist sisters facing adversity hand in hand, united by a shared passion. As in the film, with Katia and Marielle Labèque, music becomes an intimate language — a force of connection and resistance. Their bond feels almost organic, a wordless dialogue between two artists breathing as one. And, as in Prodigieuses, time seems suspended, transfigured — stretched toward a present moment of pure intensity and presence.

What remains after a Labèque concert is not just the memory of sound. It is a form of persistent joy. By offering them this stage, the Abu Dhabi Festival also offered its audience a precious mirror: one of a beauty that presents itself not as a spectacle, but as a confidence. Through their deep bond, their high standards, their quiet fire, Katia and Marielle Labèque prolonged the silence. And in that silence, there was something like a wish. That the music may continue. And that, perhaps, in the near future, they will play again on the shores of another beloved coastline: that of Lebanon, land of honey, incense… and hope.

Stay tuned for more coverage of the Abu Dhabi Festival on This is Beirut.

Lire aussi
Abu Dhabi Festival: Kuniko Kato Plays Bach and Miyoshi