Marielle Labèque was born on 6 March 1952 in Bayonne, France. She began piano lessons at age five with her Italian mother, Ada Cecchi, a former student of Marguerite Long, and graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris in 1968. With her sister Katia, she developed a career-long specialization in piano-duo repertoire for four hands and two pianos.

As one half of the internationally celebrated Katia and Marielle Labèque duo, Marielle achieved major commercial success with their 1980 two-piano recording of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which sold more than half a million copies. The duo has performed at massive public events, including a 2005 Waldbühne gala with the Berlin Philharmonic and a 2016 Schönbrunn Palace concert with the Vienna Philharmonic before over 100,000 attendees, and Marielle received a 2024 nomination in the French Order of Arts and Letters. She is married to conductor Semyon Bychkov.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katia_and_Marielle_Lab%C3%A8que