François-Xavier Roth on tour this summer

François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles visit the Edinburgh Festival for the first time this summer with a programme of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Lili Boulanger's Faust et Hélène at Usher Hall on 16 August. The players will perform on instruments and set-up that would have been used in 1913, when both works had their premieres.

The orchestra released their recording of The Rite of Spring in 2014, and Roth explained in the booklet notes: 'On period instruments, you discover a different kind of music, with new ears. Gut strings and small-bore brass instruments will never be able to compete with modern instruments in volume, but in terms of the diction of the music and its colour, one realises what he was trying to express at the time. There are tremors of fear, muted, threatening, but there’s also violence: sometimes the orchestra howls, pushed to its very limits. One comes to understand Stravinsky's compositional gesture.'

Roth also returns to Japan and South Korea this summer with Gürzenich-Orchester Köln. They begin their visit in Kawasaki on 2 July followed by Tokyo's Opera City and Suntory Hall, continuing to Andong and Seoul in South Korea, with repertoire including Schumann's 'Rhenish' Symphony and Bruckner's 'Romantic' Symphony.