Sister Love Sings Out Via Ivories : Katia and Marielle Labeque have found popularity as a piano duo after bypassing parallel solo careers

If Francois Truffaut were alive and exploring real-life subjects for a screwball comedy, he just might be intrigued by the Labeque sisters and maybe even name his movie “Push for a Piano Player.”

For not too long ago, before Katia and Marielle Labeque soared in popularity--they will perform at the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday--life as a duo posed the kind of tactical problems that led to absurd solutions.

“More than once,” says Katia by phone from their London flat, “one of us had to have her piano in the hotel elevator while the other practiced in the room. Do you know how crazy that looked to other guests? The elevator door opens and there is this demented person seated at the keyboard, riding up and down and trying to get in a few hours of practice.”

These days, the soeurs Labeque travel in style. While touring, they stay in a suite large enough to accommodate two pianos in separate rooms. But a certain zany insouciance still sets them apart from other concert artists. And their high-flying glamour speaks of an inclusive celebrity, not the muted demeanor classical music practitioners usually evoke.

Even more remarkable, in a way, is the fact that Katia and Marielle ended up as a duo rather than with parallel solo careers, since both took top honors at the Paris Conservatory’s annual competitions 20 years ago and had every chance at success separately.

“It was very mysterious, what happened,” says Katia, 42, her French accent unmistakable. “We thought the decision we took would be a temporary one. Maybe it came out of fear to face the world alone--and nothing else. But meanwhile we’ve built a whole relationship, artistic and personal. Music ties people together in inextricable ways. We understand each other deeply through the music, not because we’re sisters.”

Marielle, taller, two years younger and, as a performer, the more subdued of the two, seconds her sister. But she offers a scenario that sheds light on the dynamic between them.

“Without Katia,” she says, “I would probably have retreated to a corner somewhere. She is so smart and so curious, so full of positive energy and healthy impatience. I can get depressed on my own. Together with her, though, I love our life.”

From another perspective, the duo career is hardly surprising. As children the Labeques were taught piano by their mother, who had been a student of Marguerite Long. Predictably, Katia was like a dry sponge to water while Marielle shied away from music until infected by her sister’s enthusiasm.

At ages 14 and 12, they left an idyllic life in Hendaye, a town on France’s southwestern coast, and traveled with their 18-year-old brother to Paris where the three lived together. He enrolled in medical school and they at the conservatory. But “as provincial girls with no fondness for the city it was like leaving paradise--a carefree place where animals ran about and we could skip to the beach,” Katia recalls.

Unlike some child prodigies who are harnessed into a regimen of constant practice, the Labeques talk about their “normal” upbringing and parents who guarded against such goal-oriented severity.

Their physician-father voiced occasional opposition to the career idea, “afraid we would suffer disappointment,” Marielle says. But Ada Labeque, their mother and a woman whose “Italian zest for everything” dominated, saw no roadblocks ahead and gladly put herself to the cause.

Mother Labeque’s strength became her daughters’, allowing them to snub the conservatory after three years and break out on their own.

And a streak of independence can be seen in the way they handle career affairs. These pianists love ragtime music, for instance, and regularly program a Scott Joplin piece along with Mozart, Gershwin and Ravel. Once, a presenter requested that they leave the Joplin out, eager to conform to an arbitrary code. But when he saw their take-it-or-leave-it attitude he relented.

Even in affairs of the heart, the Labeques have been able to accommodate. For more than a dozen years, Katia says, she has maintained a relationship with British jazz guitarist and composer John McLaughlin (“we’re the same as married”). Recently, Marielle says, she has become seriously involved with Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov, who leads the Paris Orchestra.

Although home for the sisters is a flat in Chelsea, Marielle mentions that “just last week we rented a house in Firenze (Florence) for the four months Semyon directs the opera there . . . and John, who has a place in nearby Monte Carlo, can be with us too. We are living like three couples!”

But can one expect things to fall so easily into place--especially these cross-cultural liaisons played out continually on the move--without stabilizing formats?

“Not always,” says Katia. “At all costs, though, we must avoid falling into habit, which has a way of killing both music and love. So far there seems no such threat.”*

Pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque, in recital at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. Tickets $3 to $47.50. Call (213) 480-3232.