Les Siècles nominated for Gramophone award

François-Xavier Roth’s period performance ensemble Les Siècles has been nominated for Gramophone magazine’s prestigious Orchestra of the Year Award 2022. The award is chosen by the public, with other nominated orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, Bayerisches Staatsorchester and Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Gramophone writes of the nomination: ‘François-Xavier Roth’s superb French period-band this year took on, and magnificently delivered, one of opera’s greatest challenges, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Mark Pullinger enjoyed ‘the orchestral contributions of Les Siècles and the lucidity that period instruments bring to Debussy’s score’. The colours Roth finds come as no surprise given the superb series of recordings of French music they have already made together (securing Gramophone Awards and Editor’s Choices). Their album of the Ravel piano concertos had Harriet Smith writing of the Left-hand Concerto that ‘the opening, which is so often reduced to a murky rumbling, here has the clarity of a finely restored Rembrandt’, a review that propelled it to be named our Recording of the Month for July.’

Roth is on the cover of the new August issue of the magazine, discussing his new recording of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the orchestra for Harmonia Mundi.

Voting for the award closes at 8am on Monday, September 7. Vote here.