Famously, they have worked together all their lives. Inches apart. They do exactly the same job; they are not twins yet they look uncannily alike; their style - very glitzy - is virtually the same; they share a vast house in Florence. It is all this sameness that seems to have contributed to Katia and Marielle Labeque's renown synchronisation at the piano. It also adds to their strength: they are so in tune it allows them the freedom to be not just technically agile but play like the devil. Their manner is one of the few visible contrasts in the music they play and how they play it. Katia, 49, is invariably excited, Marielle, 47, habitually has her head bowed over her piano. Katia is the one with the quick smile, the musical eclectic who can improvise and plays jazz; Marielle is quieter, dedicated to chamber music and sports. The French sisters, who appear together at the Cultural Centre this weekend with a programme of works by Brahms, Schubert, Debussy and Tchaikovsky, began studying piano when they were aged three and five years old. Their teacher in the coastal town of Hendaye, north of France's border with Spain, was their Italian-born mother, Ada. They made their local debut as a duo when they were nine and seven, and started playing with a touring ballet troupe when just 15 and 17 years old and just out of the Paris Conservatory. According to Marielle: 'We were a duet in life, with all the complicity that sisters have; we thought it would be interesting to share that on stage.' Neither expected back then that they would carry on together as long. Katia describes it this way: 'We thought the decision we took would be a temporary one. Maybe it came out of fear to face the world alone.' They have built a relationship that is both artistic and personal, tied together by their music, through which they understand each other deeply. 'Music is so uncertain,' Katia has said. 'It's like love. I'm playing with my sister because I have pleasure playing with her. If one day we don't have pleasure, we will stop. It's very simple. 'For me, the biggest misery of life is the lack of desire. If you lack that, if your desire is dead, then you're finished. As long as I have this desire and passion for the music, then I am happy.' They took control, very firmly, of their careers early on. There were sound reasons, Katia says. 'We are part of a whole new generation who want the freedom to do what is best for them as artists. Marielle and I must think in terms of our long-range evolution as musicians, not in terms of immediate, popular success,' she says. Marielle agrees they have to be very strong. 'The record companies want us to do a lot of music we don't enjoy playing. Gershwin is a great composer. But we play Gershwin when we feel like playing Gershwin, not because we want to do something commercial,' she says. So they have concentrated on their evolution. Their early repertoire was contemporary - Pierre Boulez and Berio - and their first recording was of Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen. Then they worked their way through the classical and Romantic literature. Their jazz experiences, critics say, has given their classical music an easy flow. Ira Gershwin was so impressed by their two-piano version of Rhapsody In Blue and the Concerto in F that he gave them a copy of the newly discovered duo-piano version of An American In Paris two months before his death in 1983. There is only a little music written for two pianos, or piano four-hands, the few masterpieces available bit that has not limited them. They will put Joplin next to Mozart in their concerts, and play it all with sparkling fingerwork and great spontaneity. They have been close friends with trumpeter Miles Davis and admire Billy Holiday. They are fascinated by period instruments and have had two Silbermann copies built. They have shared a concert stage with Sting, Elton John, Tina Turner and Luciano Pavarotti. Playing as a duo has presented other technical problems. More than once in the early part of their career, one of them has ended up with her piano in the hotel lift while the other practised in the room. Lift doors have opened to a demented woman seated at a piano, riding up and down to get a few hours on the keyboard. Katia and Marielle Labeque. October 10, 8pm. Cultural Centre Concert Hall. Tickets cost $100-$400. Call Urbtix: 2734-9009
