Following his beloved and best-selling 2018 album of music from popular films, Renaud Capuçon returns to the magical world of cinema in Les Choses de la Vie – Cinema II. The violinist has dedicated this sequel to 19 titles written by French film composers or for iconic French films. This includes, among others, Michel Legrand’s “The Windmills of Your Mind” featured on the 1968 soundtrack to The Thomas Crown Affair; Joseph Kosma’s “Les Feuilles mortes”, or “Autumn Leaves”, heard in the 1946 film Les Portes de la nuit (Gates of the Night); and themes from the scores to The Shape of Water (2017) by Alexandre Desplat, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by Maurice Jarre, Memories of Me (1988) by Georges Delerue, and Les Choses de la vie (1970) by Philippe Sarde, which inspired the project’s name.

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.

François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles offer us a double-sided portrait of Saint-Saëns here. On one side, some of the most fascinating symphonic poems of French Romanticism are revealed in all the shimmering timbres of the period. On the other, we rediscover a composer who enjoyed a good laugh (The Carnival of the Animals also returns to its original colours!), when he was not involved in the early days of the cinema, with the very first music ever composed for a film!

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!

The ensemble Aedes began it's musical journey with Poulenc, under the impetus of conductor Mathieu Romano. Here, at the head of Les Siècles, Romano returns to the unclassifiable composer to record two of his major works. In the pious contemplation of the Litanies, here performed in the manuscript version, and the orchestral luxuriance of the Stabat Mater, spirituality is expressed through music that is lively, sensitive and even, at times, sensuous. Sculpting out every phrase and note, always at the service of the text, the ensemble and Mathieu Romano confirm their affinity with the composer's language. As an interlude Mathieu Romano has included a secular piece, O doulx regard, o parler gratieux, by the Renaissance composer Clément Janequin. The boundaries between earthly love and mystical love are thus abolished in favor of pure emotion.

Ligeti’s interest in sonorities and instrumental timbres is well known. François-Xavier Roth and the musicians of Les Siècles, themselves true alchemists of sounds and colours, recorded shimmering interpretations of these three works in 2016, displaying unprecedented clarity and naturalness, and also tremendous humour. They have been superbly remastered for this reissue.

Ligeti’s interest in sonorities and instrumental timbres is well known. François-Xavier Roth and the musicians of Les Siècles, themselves true alchemists of sounds and colours, recorded shimmering interpretations of these three works in 2016, displaying unprecedented clarity and naturalness, and also tremendous humour. They have been superbly remastered for this reissue.

Continuing their exploration of Ravel’s output, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles offer us two works linked by his love of Spain. Alongside the famous Bolero, which regains its original flavour here on period instruments, is Ravel’s first opera, which flirted with libertinism: though its outstanding cast consists entirely of native French-speakers, this caustic ‘Hour’ remains quintessentially Spanish!

La Mer is one of Debussy's most universally admired orchestral works. By contrast, his Première Suite pour orchestre was lost for more than a century, and came as a complete discovery in 2013 when Les Siècles made the world premiere recording, played on instruments of the period. Now here is a brand-new remastering. An ideal opportunity to view in a fresh light the career of a composer we thought we ‘knew everything about’.

After a period-instrument reading of the Symphony no.1 that received unanimous acclaim from the critics, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles return to Mahler. Joined by the luminous voice of Sabine Devieilhe for the famous finale, they offer us their vision of the Fourth Symphony, which in its own way marks the composer’s transition to modernity, and reveal unsuspected colours and instrumental balances. We still have much to learn about the polyphonic transparency possible within Mahler’s big orchestra!

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.

Saint-Saëns's first opera, Le Timbre d'argent initially composed in 1864 need not fear comparison with some of the most celebrated works in the nineteenth-century French repertory. It depicts the nightmare of a man whose hallucinations anticipate by twenty years the fantastical apparitions of Offenbach's Les Contes d Hoffmann.