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    Roberto Benzi  ROBERTO BENZI, conductor

    MONTSERRAT MARTI MONTSERRAT MARTI, soprano

     
    MICHEL BEROFF  MICHEL BÉROFF, piano

    FILOMENA MORETTI  FILOMENA MORETTI, guitar

    OLIVIER CHARLIER  OLIVIER CHARLIER, violin  GRZEGORZ NOWAK  GRZEGORZ NOWAK, conductor  
    THIERRY ESCAICH  THIERRY ESCAICH, composer & organist MICHEL PLASSON  MICHEL PLASSON, conductor
    WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ, soprano GEORGES PLUDERMACHER  GEORGES PLUDERMACHER, piano  
    ANNE GASTINEL  ANNE GASTINEL, cello MARCELA ROGGERI  MARCELA ROGGERI, piano we are proud to have represented
     Bruno Leonardo Gelber  BRUNO LEONARDO GELBER, piano YUTAKA SADO  YUTAKA SADO, conductor  BRIGITTE ENGERER  BRIGITTE ENGERER✝, piano
    MATT HAIMOVITZ  MATT HAIMOVITZ, cello Marcela Roggeri - Florent Heau  MARCELA ROGGERI & FLORENT HEAU NAUM STARKMANNNAUM STARKMANN ✝, piano

     Florent Heau  FLORENT HEAU, clarinet

    Isabelle and Florence Lafitte - photo©Laurent Vicenzotti  ISABELLE & FLORENCE LAFITTE  MONTSERRAT CABALLE  MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ, soprano
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  • Conductors

    Roberto Benzi  ROBERTO BENZI
    Grzegorz Nowak  GRZEGORZ NOWAK
    Michel Plasson  MICHEL PLASSON
    Yutaka Sado  YUTAKA SADO
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  • Instrumentalists

     Olivier Charlier  OLIVIER CHARLIER, violin Thierry Escaich  THIERRY ESCAICH, composer & orgue  
    Anne Gastinel  ANNE GASTINEL, cello Michel Beroff  MICHEL BÉEROFF, piano  
    Matt Haimovitz  MATT HAIMOVITZ, cello Bruno Leonardo Gelber   BRUNO LEONARDO GELBER, piano  
    Filomena Moretti  FILOMENA MORETTI, guitar Georges Pludermacher  GEORGES PLUDERMACHER, piano  
    Florent Heau  FLORENT HEAU, clarinet  Marcela Roggeri  MARCELA ROGGERI, piano  
         
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  • Singers
     
    WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ  WHILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ, soprano
    MONTSERRAT MARTI  MONTSERRAT MARTI, soprano
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  • Chamber Music / Orchestras
     Marcela Roggeri - Florent Heau  MARCELA ROGGERI & FLORENT HEAU
    Isabelle and Florence Lafitte - photo©Laurent Vicenzotti  ISABELLE & FLORENCE LAFITTE
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  • Valmalete's Family Album

Isabelle and Florence Lafitte, two piano-duo

Isabelle and Florence LafitteTHE SPIRIT OF DUO. Isabelle and Florence Lafitte are sisters and twins. So much for the anecdotal information, which the press offices never fails to take up. But, leaving beside the incidental facts, they are also part of a restricted world, that of the duo for two pianos, rare and little known because it makes demands, terrible demands, on the players. The duo does not so much bring together two personalities, accumulated and associated like two demi-pianists made into a single whole; rather it is an entity as rich as an orchestra, as intransigent as a string quartet, uniting every single day in the constant effort to perfect a sound, which must then be developed in the service of the works performed. Thirty-six years of such labour, and thirty years of concert performance: that is the measure of the Duo Lafitte's career to date. At the outset, they had to learn to play together, work through rhythms to find their common pulse. Not uniform, common. Like a long-term relationship in which, at the last, each partner develops individually within the pattern of common growth. The emancipation is interior, musical. The vibrant piano duo learned to assume a stern, terrible character when squaring up to an orchestra: the France National Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, the Toulouse Capitole Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra … The Mozart and Poulenc concertos, naturally, but also many other, rarely heard works. The repertoire is truly immense. Unfazed, indeed attracted by its immensity, Isabelle and Florence Lafitte have explored it, often as pioneers, desiring new places and going to them. Their repertoire has progressively expanded. Once over the hurdle of Milhaud's Scaramouche and Brahms' Hungarian Dances, they played a Petrarch Sonnet by Liszt directly from the manuscript score, since it had been neither published nor played in modern times. They have created a data base of more than seven thousand works for two pianos, and are still looking for and enquiring after others. Nothing stimulates their playing more than the new pieces which they commission or which Isabelle writes herself. When asked for concert programmes, they respond with a willingness to leave the trodden paths. The wealth of neglected material which they lovingly restore to performing order has become the core of their militant efforts on behalf of music for two pianos. The duo passion motivates their quest. The public has been quick to recognise their value, for the piano duo is nothing if not spectacular. It does not possess the fierce intimacy of the piano duet, instead revealing itself always as a moment of intensity, sculpted by the vibrations of two giant instruments. Major concert venues throughout Asia and Europe (Concertgebouw - Amsterdam, Novell Hall - Taipei, KKL - Luzern, Mausikhalle - Hamburg), or in America have welcomed and anxiously awaited the duo's performances as prestigious events in the musical calendar. They possess an almost instant capacity to merge with the space at each venue, in performances that are to be watched almost as much as listened to. It is then that the twinship of Isabelle and Florence Lafitte attends the viewer's gaze, as in a game of spot-the-difference; but hearing takes the upper hand, unsealing their temperaments, their magnificent service to music. Christophe Mory

 

CONTACT US
email info@valmalete.ch
phone +41 91 605 65 06

MORE ABOUT DUO LAFITTE
Biography in French
Press Quotes
Photos
Program Film Music
Listen
Discography

« Frappé par leur parfaite musicalité, leur justesse d’expression, le "fini" de leur exécution qui témoignent d’une maîtrise surprenante de la musique de chambre pour de si jeunes artistes, je ne fus pas le seul à être impressionné par l’accord profond qui existe entre Isabelle et Florence Lafitte ainsi que par leur talent respectif »
Paul Tortelier

Valmalete Swiss . Via alla Chiesa 3 . CH-6934 Bioggio/Lugano . Switzerland | Phone: +41 91 605 65 06 | eMail: info@valmalete.ch | www.valmalete.ch