Music Reviews : The Labeques Play Outdoors Again

In their third visit to Los Angeles within 16 months, duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque, played their signature piece, Michel Camilo’s “Caribe,” a work written for them by the Dominican composer and jazz pianist, to close their latest appearance.

But that was the only work being repeated from those earlier visits. At the outdoor Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, on a cool but not uncomfortable Wednesday evening, the French musicians gave a program half Mozart and half jazz.

Not surprisingly, the Labeques excelled in both idioms, a dichotomy which might confuse some, but not longtime observers of these accomplished pianists. And, for once, the sisters did not maintain their familiar roles: Katia, the younger, becoming the more exuberant, mercurial one; her older, taller sister, Marielle, impersonating the steady, serious partner.

Such stereotypes never materialized at this event--attended by what looked to be a couple hundred listeners. Instead, both pianists proved rock-steady, nuance-producing and virtuosic in the Mozart works, passionate, impetuous and digitally superior in jazzy compositions by Camilo and by their longtime collaborator, John McLaughlin.

In the showy technical portions of Camilo’s “Journey” and McLaughlin’s “Florianopolis” and “Girls With Red Shoes”--the latter a virtual perpetuum mobile for flying fingers and flagellated keys--the pianistic partners went about their keyboard whomping with joy and eclat , nary missing a 32nd note or quick melodic twist.

When it came time for quietude and poetry, they proved similarly expert, laying out the long lines and inward urgencies of Camilo’s “In Love” and McLaughlin’s “Three Willows” with practiced finesse. Given the horrors of the Greek’s distorting sound-amplification, which seems to turn resourceful grand pianos into metallic echo chambers, such finesse had to surprise.

The tinny sound system also spoiled a lot of Mozart at the top of this program. Through the acoustical haze, however, one sensed, even occasionally received, purling passagework, even scales, polished arpeggios and, once in a while, a soaring Mozartean melody.

The works presented were Ferruccio Busoni’s two-piano transcription of the F-minor Fantasia for organ, K. 608; the Andante and Variations in G, for four-hands at one piano, K. 501, and the famous D-major Sonata, K. 448, originally for this medium.