Katia and Marielle Labèque & Franz Schubert Filharmonia

Repertoire

Performers

Programme notes

Katia and Marielle Labèque are the most acclaimed piano duo of our time. Thanks to them, audiences worldwide have enjoyed exceptional performances of an extraordinary repertoire. In this, their first collaboration with our orchestra, they will perform Mozart’s Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, a work the composer premiered with his sister Nannerl.
In the second half of the concert, Tomàs Grau will conduct Schumann’s immersive and radical Fourth Symphony.

TWO PIANOS AND A SYMPHONY

Together sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque make up the most acclaimed piano duo in classical music today. While visiting us in Barcelona, they will perform a work written for two other siblings: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his sister Nannerl. Mozart composed this concerto at the age of 23 and later, after settling in Vienna, also performed it with one of his pupils. It is a work brimming with poise and elegance from the very first bar onwards, and the key to conveying the full beauty of the score is an understanding of the finely balanced relationship between the two solo parts. Robert Schumann often made a slow start on his orchestral works, but once he had made up his mind, he never stopped. He drafted the Fourth Symphony not long after his marriage to Clara Wieck. “I can tell from his behaviour,” she wrote, “that this will be another work plucked from the depths of his soul.” The premiere was overshadowed by the fact that the most famous piano duo of the day – that of Franz Liszt and Clara herself – performed at the same concert. Years later, however, Robert revised the symphony, shaping it into the work we know and love today – full of light and intensity, written from the heart, with a popular appeal that has never waned since the day of its second premiere (1853).