Whether united by family or fate, some musical partnerships are so powerful they go way beyond the sum of their parts. Georgia Mann chooses her top three classical duos

The last time I saw my esteemed BBC colleague Stuart Maconie he was surrounded by thousands of lightly perspiring Prommers throwing shapes at the Northern Soul Prom. I’m pleased to see he’s continued the rock ‘n roll behaviour with an appearance in this edition of the Idler, musing on pop’s most sacred twosome: Lennon and McCartney. It got me thinking about the impact of duos in the classical musical domain; the world of symphonies, operas and concerti owes a great deal to double acts. Here are three of the best.

Mozart & Da Ponte
The Marriage of Figaro has rightly been seen as emblematic of Mozart’s transformative power in the field of opera. In that piece, all about servants plotting to outsmart their philandering employer Count Almaviva, Mozart liberated opera from its obsession with mythology, its plodding plots and interminable dance routines. But Mozart didn’t change the operatic game alone – his partner in crime was librettist, poet, and Catholic priest Lorenzo Da Ponte. Da Ponte gave that work character and bite, and he would undoubtedly have been drawing from his own very eventful life.

Da Ponte was born into a Jewish family in 1749 in what was then the Republic of Venice, but became a Catholic priest at the age of 24. He clearly didn’t take his priestly duties that seriously though, taking a mistress with whom he had two children and generally leading a life not too far off that of Mozart’s character Don Giovanni. He made friends with Giacomo Casanova, whom he met in 1777, but perhaps Lorenzo shouldn’t have emulated that great seducer quite so convincingly, as he ended up being charged with “public concubinage” at the age of 32 and banished from Venice. Still, if that hadn’t happened, he would never have found himself in Vienna, where his path soon crossed Mozart’s. Da Ponte wrote the libretti for Mozart’s most successful operas, in each case generally adapting the work of other writers.

With The Marriage of Figaro he was updating a play by Beaumarchais, and he wrote a preface to the libretto which gives us a sense of what he was trying to achieve: “I have not made a translation [of Beaumarchais], but rather an imitation… In spite … of all the zeal and care on the part of both the composer and myself to be brief, the opera will not be one of the shortest … Our excuse will be the variety of development of this drama … to paint faithfully and in full colour the divers passions that are aroused, and … to offer a new type of spectacle.”

The Labèque Sisters
My brother and I occasionally do some sixties cover versions – him on guitar, me on vocals – with our speciality being “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane (only my long-suffering parents have had the pleasure of hearing our version at the time of publication). Siblings often have an almost telepathic musical connection, and such is the case with Katia and Marielle Labèque, sisters born in Bayonne, on the southwest coast of France, two years apart in age. They are the preeminent piano duo in classical music and their connection does seem somewhat supernatural.

Perhaps that idea is aided by the fact that they both look like something from a Pre-Raphaelite painting: long, flowing dark curls, delicate build, and pale complexions. Their image is further enhanced by the fact that the sisters live together in a palace that once belonged to the Borgia family in Rome. Katia and Marielle were first taught by their mother. Their uncanny connection as a duo has meant they’ve pushed the boundaries of piano four-hands performance. Have a listen to their 1980 version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue or their collaboration with Radiohead’s Thom York on their Minimalist Dream House album to get the full otherworldly Labèque experience.

Barenboim and du Pré
“She had a capacity to see a page of music and immediately possess it, see everything that was in it. You had the feeling she was born with all this music inside her”… The words of pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim, referring to his late wife, the great cellist Jacqueline du Pré. These two were the musical power couple to end them all – even Clara and Robert Schumann didn’t have this level of shared musical brilliance and charisma. Perhaps the era in which they fell in love adds to their mystique.

Barenboim and du Pré met in 1960s London and married in 1967. Their Abbey Road recordings of the Brahms Sonatas are charged with a soul-searching intensity, their 1967 filmed account of Elgar’s Cello Concerto pulses with passion and melancholy. Du Pré was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in October 1973 at the age of 28. Two years before the diagnosis, she’d started to notice a numbness in her fingers. As the illness progressed, she couldn’t even open her cello case. It was the cruellest of diseases for a musician – her career ended just a decade after it had begun. “It was hell on earth for her, for us,” Barenboim said.

There was an added tragic and somewhat salacious twist to this tale, with Barenboim starting a new relationship while still married to du Pré. Jacqueline died in 1987. Barenboim later remarked: “I never claim, nor do I now, that I am or was a saint. But I did what I could.”

Take a look at the films Christopher Nupen made, featuring Barenboim and du Pré, especially the one in which they’re playing Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio with Pinchas Zukerman. There’s a certain indefinable energy that is as electric now as it was when that film was made back in 1970.

Georgia Mann presents Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3.

This article is from the new issue of the Idler (#110) July 2026 – out now.

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