Perspectives: Philip Glass Cocteau Trilogy

Katia Labèque Piano 
Marielle Labèque Piano

Philip Glass Orphée, La Belle et la Bête, Les Enfants Terribles (suite for two pianos)

NCH is pleased to collaborate on this new commission by Katia and Marielle Labèque for Philip Glass. 

In 1964, at the age of 27, Philip Glass moved to Paris to study under Nadia Boulanger. Their meeting would prove decisive in the young composer’s training and afforded him an immersion into French culture that left a lasting impression on the artist. His love of France also gave him a command of the French language that would help him to write and versify the operas that he dedicated to Cocteau during the 1990s.

In 2021, Katia and Marielle Labèque created the instrumental suites for two pianos taken from Philip Glass’s opera Les Enfants Terribles, based on the film by Cocteau. The success of both the record and their concerts – held at venues including the Philharmonie de Paris – left the pianists all the more eager to ask Philip Glass and his music director Michael Riesman to complete the trilogy by applying the same method to the remaining two operas in the Cocteau Trilogy: Orphée and La Belle et la Bête.

“The Labèque sisters are tremendous. They’re great performers, and great interpreters. And they’re wonderful supporters of music – not only modern music, but just music.” Philip Glass

Katia and Marielle Labèque are renowned for the energy and synchronicity of their duets. They are regularly invited as guest performers by the most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Vienna Philharmonic, led by conductors such as Marin Alsop, Semyon Bychkov, Gustavo Dudamel, Gustavo Gimeno, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Pietari Inkinen, Louis Langrée, Zubin Mehta, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Pappano, Matthias Pintscher, Georges Prêtre, Sir Simon Rattle, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Jaap van Zweden.