Invocations

Description

The first recording by Katia & Marielle Labèque for Deutsche Grammophon is part of their new collaboration with the prestigious yellow label, while offering a "discourse" that is their own and characterizes them. The album brings together The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky and the Ancient Epigraphs by Debussy, not in their four-hand versions as conceived by the authors, but played on two pianos. "In general, we never play on two keyboards works originally intended for one keyboard, those where the intimacy of four hands makes sense," explain Katia and Marielle Labèque regarding the Ancient Epigraphs. "But in the context of a recording, where everything can be controlled closely, we find it more interesting to play them on two keyboards." As for the four-hand piano reduction of The Rite, which is almost impractical in this configuration, they state: "In certain works of a very orchestral nature, this allows us to add elements from the original orchestral score that would have been unplayable with four hands." A strong erotic and sensual charge underlies the two scores: dispassionate and filtered, in Debussy; priapic and convulsive, in Stravinsky...