François-Xavier Roth
Features, videos, recordings and concerts with our Principal Guest Conductor
François-Xavier Roth has been one of our Principal Guest Conductors since 2017. He first collaborated with the Orchestra when he won the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition in 2000, and has conducted the LSO every year since.
He is a champion of new music, and has been a key figure in the LSOs Panufnik Composers Scheme for over ten years, conducting the annual Composers Workshops at LSO St Luke’s and LSO Futures concerts at the Barbican.
Roth is also the founder of the period-instrument orchestra Les Siècles and will take up the position of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the SWR Symphonieorchester in September 2025
Videos
News & Stories
François-Xavier Roth on the 2023/24 Season
‘As a conductor, I always want to have contact with new music. Reading and studying a new score is like musical fitness – it’s stimulating for my eyes, for my brain, and for my music-making, and it affects my reading of the older music.’
Recordings
Reviews
‘Roth was very much in his element, meanwhile, in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony … – an interpretation of great integrity and subtlety, swift without ever once seeming hectored, the overriding sense of wonder at the beauties of nature deeply felt yet understated, and attaining genuine sublimity.’ ★★★★ The Guardian, May 2023
‘Roth’s ear for orchestral colour suggested, in that well-worn cliché, a sensitive restoration of an old master painting.’ Seen and Heard International, Feb 2023
‘Under the energetic direction of François-Xavier Roth, it turned out to be a most generous and stimulating evening.’ ★★★★★ Bachtrack, Mar 2018
