MUSIC REVIEW : Labeque Sisters Lift Excitement Level at Bowl

Purists of the jazz camp might have a lot of trouble swallowing the idiosyncratic, text-flouting, oddly accented performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” given in Hollywood Bowl this week by the duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque.

But appreciators of lively music-making and exciting pianism, as 7,948 of them showed Wednesday night in the outdoor amphitheater, seemed eager to embrace the latest local performance by the musicianly French sisters.

Style may be arguable--and there was much possible controversy in this provocative Gershwin performance--but hot is hot. This time around, the Labeques were hot.

They began on a plateau of high energy and poetic awareness, with five of the 16 Slavonic Dances by Dvorak, music of irresistible appeal, here gorgeously brought to life in wondrous detail.

Then they moved aggressively--a cherishable approach after the touch-me-not playing of the Dichters, earlier in the week--into the 20th Century with Stravinsky’s Three Movements from “Petrushka,” played with a boldness and conviction the team has not always achieved consistently. This time, myriad colors and emotions were expressed, giving this familiar music new facets.

Subtlety is not a word we would have used to describe the Labeques’ playing in times past, but it is appropriate for their many-hued reading of Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole,” a performance full of light and shade, as well as urgency and nuance.

This was in surprising contrast to their subsequent, Gallicized re-creation of “Rhapsody in Blue,” which turned out in many moments to resemble the musical equivalent of spoken English mispronounced. For all its panache, quick tempos, languid slow passages and controlled precipitousness, this was a “Rhapsody in Blue” unlike any you may have heard. Strange and wonderful and unique.

After that, and a lot of noisy response from the crowd in the amphitheater, the sisters gave a single encore, one said to have been written for them, Michel Camilo’s jazzy “Caribe.”