Nicolas Roudier

Nicolas Roudier is one of the leading historical horn players of the new generation in early music. A native of France, he won first prize at the Artistic Competition of Épinal before studying with Phil Myers. In 2018, he earned a Master’s degree in modern horn performance from the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne, Switzerland. He then turned to historical performance, completing a second Master’s in Early Music in 2020 and an Artist Certificate in 2021 at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague under Teunis van der Zwart.

Now based in the Netherlands, Nicolas performs with many of Europe’s most renowned ensembles, including the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Freiburger Barockorchester, Concentus Musicus Wien, Armonia Atenea, Apollo Ensemble, La Petite Bande, Amsterdam Baroque, Concerto Köln, and the Göttinger Barockorchester. He is a regular member of Das Neue Mannheimer Orchester and the Dresdner Festspielorchester. He has performed under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington, René Jacobs, Hidemi Suzuki, Kent Nagano, Ivor Bolton, Ton Koopman, Sigiswald Kuijken, and many others. In 2023, he performed Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 with Red Dot Baroque for the Singapore premiere of the complete Brandenburg cycle. He is now actively involved in the first production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen on period instruments, the Wagner Cycles.

Nicolas is also an active chamber musician and soloist. Frequently appearing in recitals with pianists, he showcases the evolution of the horn through time and geography by selecting historically appropriate instruments from his unique collection of about 25 original horns, dating from the 1790s to the present. He co-founded the wind quintet Harmos Winds, with which he has performed extensively.Passionate about research, horn organology, and rediscovered repertoire, Nicolas has received several academic awards and has presented lectures at REMA’s 2020 Early Music Summit and the 2021 Historical Brass Society Symposium. In 2019, he became the first horn player to record Mozart’s music on a period instrument from the composer’s era (Kerner, 1760).

He is the co-organizer of Les Concerts du Temps Retrouvé in France and founder of Artescripta, which publishes handmade facsimiles of rare 18th- and 19th-century sheet music. His work has been supported by the Adriana Jacoba Foundation, the Countess of Bylandt Foundation, and the Dutch Performing Arts Fund.