Les Siècles Roth

Paris, early Twentieth Century: in the space of three ballets, a previously unknown Russian composer revolutionised the music of his time. With The Firebird and Petrushka, respectively fairytale and folktale, and of course The Rite of Spring, a telluric invocation with its insanely innovative harmonies and rhythms, Stravinsky dynamised the Late Romantic orchestra, taking it to literally unheard-of places.

The dance permeated every layer of Romantic society. From popular dance halls to courtly salons, people showed their public face, enjoyed themselves and met one another in waltz time or to the rhythms of the quadrille or the polka. At the same time, ballet gained unprecedented fame on the stage of the Paris Opéra. The music that accompanied this frantic round in France has long been neglected, whereas the Viennese have never ceased to celebrate their waltzes. Under the expert baton of François-Xavier Roth, the orchestra Les Siècles has set out to rediscover this French repertory using historical instruments. Their album explores the output of both established composers – Camille Saint-Saëns, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet – and their colleagues who specialised in Terpsichorean entertainment, including Philippe Musard, Isaac Strauss, Émile Waldteufel and Hervé.

This release, part of harmonia mundi's series celebrating the Beethoven year, pairs the composer's iconic and much-loved Symphony No.5 with the far less well-known Symphony In 17 Parts by Francois-Joseph Gossec. The dramatic power and intensity of Beethoven stands in sharp contrast to to the cheerful and gallant music of Gossec. Les Siècles, led by François-Xavier Roth, apply their usual virtuosity and keen insight to both works in performances that are sure to delight.

Isabelle Faust and François-Xavier Roth explore here extremely contrasting facets of Stravinsky’s output for violin. From the Concerto to the Pastorale, the composer plays with codes and colours, sketching extraordinarily vivid soundscapes. Once again, the musicians of Les Siècles have succeeded in rediscovering the works’ original dynamic by using period instruments – and that changes everything!

A new aesthetic calls for new forms: such is the challenge the composer set for himself in the two works presented here. In Les Nuits d’été, Berlioz pioneered, well before Mahler and Ravel, a song cycle for voice and orchestra. In Harold in Italy, scored for large orchestra and solo viola, he experimented with the symphonic genre. These period-instrument performances by Les Siècles, led by François-Xavier Roth, with violist Tabea Zimmermann, also feature Stéphane Degout in the vocal cycle, heard here in the composer’s own version for baritone. File under: out of the ordinary.

The practice of performing music on original instruments was once the exclusive domain of early music specialists who sought to revive the characteristic sounds of Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical instruments and ensembles scaled to proper size. The so-called "historically informed movement" eventually expanded into re-creating 19th century music, which yielded some ear-opening performances; but this practice soon began to overlap with modern interpretation and instrumentation, so the actual differences between period and modern strings or winds were minimal.

Pelléas et Mélisande has taken it's place as one of opera's greatest masterpieces. Debussy deployed a unique style in this work, flexible and natural, never forcing the prosody of words and phrases. In this new historically informed interpretation, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles have endeavored to do justice to this music that is at once so strong and so delicate, supported by a handpicked cast of today's finest French singers.