Les Siècles nominated for Gramophone Orchestra of the Year

Les Siècles is nominated as Gramophone magazine’s Orchestra of the Year 2018 - and to win we need your vote! "Allez Allez, Allez Les Siecles!” and visit gramophone.co.uk/awards to vote!

François-Xavier Roth founded his group Les Siècles in 2003, drawing on a huge pool of talented players, to reinvent the orchestral concert and tackle a wide range of music from the Baroque to the 20th century on period-appropriate instruments.

Their recordings of Stravinsky ballets opened many ears:

"I won’t quickly forget the sound of Stravinsky’s big drum and timpani punching holes in the air: just one amazing element among many in this searingly clear, rainbow-textured account, featuring French instruments old enough to have been used at the noisy 1913 premiere. Poetic valveless horns, fresh-voiced flutes, pellucid bassoons, quicksilver trumpets: they electrified the air.” The Times

This year, new releases included Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Ma mère l'Oye and Le Tombeau de Couperin on Harmonia Mundi and a disc with Sabine Devieilhe, ‘Mirages’ for Erato.

"The period band give the texture a transparency that never seems contrived...A treat.” The Sunday Times