The “Fantastic Symphony” of Berlioz is one of the world’s most frequently performed pieces. Due to the French orchestra Les Siècles (“The Centuries”) the audience of “Zaryadye” hears it the way it could have been heard during composer’s lifetime.

An outstanding musician and conductor, French François-Xavier Roth founded Les Siècles in 2003, and now the orchestra is one of the leaders of authentic baroque. The musicians gather a great collection of ancient instruments to perform any music of any epoche, while their repertoire stretches from baroque to the present time.

Live concerts of the orchestra, as well as its studio albums, are highly critically acclaimed. The orchestra was awarded for the recordings of Stravinskys’ and Ravels’ ballets, as well as for the recordings of some of Debussy’s pieces. In 2018, “Mirages” album, that contains vocal oeuvres of Debussy, Delibes, and Berlioz, was nominated for Grammy.

This night, they also play rare Berlioz’s overture to his unfinished opera “Les francs-juges” (“The Judges of the Secret Court”), and Beethoven’s Piano concerto № 3 with pianist Alice Sara Ott.

The German pianist of Japanese descent Alice Sara Ott is one of the top-30 musicians of new generation. For 10 years now, she is exclusively signed to Deutsche Grammophon, a world’s leading classical label.

“Her technique is ­dazzling, her tone ­wonderfully varied, from ­crystalline purity to powerfully raw, and the energy propelling her playing seems –unstoppable”, The Guardian’s columnist Andrew Clements wrote in 2010.