It was through their recordings of Stravinsky’s early ballets a decade ago that François-Xavier Roth and the period instruments of Les Siècles cemented their international reputation. Hearing The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring played on instruments that could have been used at the works’ premieres was in its way as revelatory as the first historically informed performances of baroque and classical works had been half a century earlier. Now with the violinist Isabelle Faust, who has already recorded a number of discs of 19th-century concertos and chamber music on period instruments, Roth and his orchestra turn their attention to the later, neoclassical Stravinsky, and in particular to his Violin Concerto, first performed in 1931.
