The Sisters Labeque to Play Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, 19 Oct

Melbourne Recital Centre in association with Melbourne Festival will welcome The Sisters Labeque on 19 Oct. to Elisabeth Murdoch Hall. Tickets: Single tickets from $50, season tickets available. Bookings: www.melbournerecital.com.au or 9699 3333

Katia and Marielle Labèque are sibling pianists renowned for their ­ensemble of synchronicity and energy. Their musical ambitions started at an early age when they rose to international fame with their contemporary rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (one of the first gold records in classical music.) and have since developed a stunning career performing worldwide. In a string of hit recordings and international engagements, they've collaborated with a who's-who of famous composers, conductors and orchestras playing music from the baroque to the 21st Century.

In the San Francisco Chronicle one reviewer said, "Their performance was a knockout! Katia and Marielle Labèque, the mop-maned French sisters who have made a specialty of the repertoire for back-to-back pianos, combining familiar fare with a dazzling rarity, delivered it all with a welcome blend of theatricality and affection."

Known not only for their jazz and classical programs, the Labèque sisters also have a keen interest in early music, having given recitals on fortepianos with baroque ensembles and have recently toured with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Sir Simon Rattle.

In the first half of the program, Claude Debussy's haunting piano duo is music etched in black and white. Composed in the midst of the First World War, En blanc et noir is Debussy at his most abstract and incisive. Debussy's colleague Maurice Ravel paints a very different picture of Spain - sundrenched and sensuous - in his Rapsodie espagnole, a dazzling set of Spanish dances. The piano duet version was a sketch along the way to the more familiar orchestral fantasy, but as you'll hear, the Labèques easily match an orchestra for colour and brilliance.

The second half of the evening they play Berstein's unmissable West Side Story which has been translated with the composer's endorsement by Irwin Kostal, the musical's original orchestrator, into this brilliant version especially for the Labèques. They have also released a new recording of the work on their own label, KML Recordings.