©Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot

©Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot

©Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot

©Photo: David Boni

©Photo: David Boni

©Photo: Uwe Arens

François Leleux

Oboe / Conductor

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“When the space is filled by a conductor and soloist with the outsize charisma and musicianship of the French oboist Francois Leleux, the effect is doubled.”
(The Arts Desk)

Artistic Partner: Camerata Salzburg
Artist in Residence: Orquesta de València (2024/25)
Artist Director: Kammerakademie Potsdam (2025/26 season)

Conductor and oboist Francois Leleux is renowned for his irrepressible energy, exuberance, and musical clarity. Leleux has previously featured as Artistic Partner of Camerata Salzburg, Artist-in-Association with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, and Artist-in-Residence with orchestras such as hr-Sinfonieorchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Berner Symphonieorchester, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife.

In the 2024/25 season, Leleux’s conducting engagements include appearances with Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and Robert Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz. Leleux furthers his international profile as a play-conductor via his continued close association with Camerata Salzburg and appears as a soloist with the SWR Symphonieorchester under conductor Andres Orozco-Estrada and Orchestre de Paris under Roberto González-Monjas. Additional season highlights include a residency with Orquesta de Valencia as both conductor and soloist, Leleux’s first appearance with Estonian National Symphony Orchestra as conductor, and the first of several collaborations with Kammerakademie Potsdam in anticipation of Leleux taking over as Artistic Director of the Kammerakademie Potsdam in 2025/26.

As an oboist, Leleux has performed with orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Swedish Radio and NHK Symphony orchestras. A dedicated chamber musician, he regularly performs worldwide with long-standing recital partners Lisa Batiashvili, Eric Le Sage and Emmanuel Strosser, as well as with his critically acclaimed woodwind sextet Les Vents Français who in 2024/25 will give numerous concerts across Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Japan.

Committed to expanding the oboe’s repertoire, Leleux has commissioned many new works from composers such as Nicolas Bacri, Michael Jarrell, Giya Kancheli, Thierry Pécou, Gilles Silvestrini and Eric Tanguy. In recent seasons, he has premiered an oboe concerto by Laurent Petitgirard, Souen Wou K’ong written especially for him (2021/22); the cor anglais version of Debussy’s Rapsodie for saxophone, also arranged especially for him by Silvestrini (2017/18); Jarrell’s oboe concerto Aquateinte (2016/17); and Thierry Escaich’s Double Concerto for Violin and Oboe, whose premiere performances Leleux and Lisa Batiashvili gave with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and New York Philharmonic.

Leleux’s latest recording, Bienvenue en France, released on Warner Classics is a collaboration with pianist Emmanuel Strosser featuring 20^th century French composers including Saint-Saëns, Dutilleux and Debussy and the contemporary Thierry Pécou. As a conductor, Leleux and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra released an album of works by Bizet and Gounod for Linn Records in 2019. His album of works by Hummel and Haydn, recorded with Münchener Kammerorchester, received award recognition in 2016. Other recordings include works by J.S. Bach with Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Mozart with Camerata Salzburg, and Strauss’ Oboe Concerto with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding.

François Leleux is a Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.

Gallery

Stravinsky: Pulcinella-Suite ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ François Leleux © Frankfurt Radio Symphony

Debussy: Petite Suite ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ François Leleux © Frankfurt Radio Symphony

Svenska Kammarorkestern - Serenad © Örebro Konserthus

François Leleux | SCO Featured Artist © Scottish Chamber Orchestra

François Leleux: Haydn- Symphony No.44 © Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

François Leleux: Fauré- Suite aus 'Pelléas et Mélisande' op.80 © hr-Sinfonieorchester

François Leleux: Haydn- Symphony No.82 in C major © Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

“Sophisticated […], replete with humour and virtuosity” *****

Keith Bruce, The Herald, February 2024

“Yet, at this concert under Leleux’s baton and in the excellent interpretation of the [Hungarian] National Philharmonic, it is revealed that [Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 “the Great” in C major] is by no means a sorrowful, immense, dark, monumental and egotistic work, but an airy, easy-going, translucent, beautifully melodic, deeply thrilling and alluring piece imbued with captivating rhythms.”

(János Mácsai, Új Zenei Újság, January 2021)

“To be frank, I had never heard anything like this. Leleux is an absolutely fabulous virtuoso; he masters his oboe to an incredible extent. It was a phenomenal pleasure to listen to him.”

(János Mácsai, Új Zenei Újság, January 2021)

“Leleux leads the SCO’s crack wind soloists in a sprightly account of the Gounod and has a delicious way with the Bizet pieces: few recorded performances have delivered such an ideal balance between winds and strings, and such Terpsichorean joie de vivre.”

(The Sunday Times, February 2020)

“when the space is filled by a conductor and soloist with the outsize charisma and musicianship of the French oboist Francois Leleux, the effect is doubled… Leleux’s magnetism is such that the ensemble didn’t once sag or smudge… with the chamber-sized CBSO by now clearly willing to follow him anywhere, it sparkled with dew”

(October 2018, Arts Desk)

“Wielding a baton or his oboe, Leleux’s instrumental ebullience is reciprocated, whether he is soloist on his own instrument or directing the orchestra with irrepressible energy”

(October 2018, The Herald)

“As an oboist, Leleux is a remarkably charismatic, flamboyant performer, matching immaculate technique with a dazzlingly vivid identification with his music. Those qualities continue in his conducting – detailed, demanding, but full of such abundant enthusiasm that you’re swept up in it from the first moment”

(The Scotsman, March 2018)

“As a conductor, Leleux brings French elegance to Liszt’s leitmotif of Romanticism… The orchestra shines with beautiful solos of the wind instruments, shows itself as a flexible sound body, led by Leleux with sparkling energy.”

(Dreh Punkt Kulture, January 2018)

“It was nevertheless difficult to take our eyes of Leleux…the beauty of his sound made it almost impossible to focus on anything else”

(Herald Scotland, August 2017)

“French oboist François Leleux has a remarkable collection of musical talents, but it was his overriding desire to communicate, to tell his music’s stories, that marked out his Queen’s Hall recital as something very special”

(The Scotsman August 2017)

“Soloist Francois Leleux brought a bigger-than-life personality to this music (Strauss Oboe Concerto)…(he) delivered a virtual seminar, bringing a fresh, playful quality that suited this capricious score ideally. Leleux’s long, sustained phrasing was rendered with remarkable fluency and he played with the natural ease of one whose technique is complete, in a spirited and captivating performance.”

(Chicago Classical Review, August 2017)

“The sparkling vitality of the conductor François Leleux was clear from the first movement of the “Kleine G Minor” … He carefully drew the leitmotiv out from the piano in a viscous legato, drove it up and chased it..”

(Salzburger Nachrichten, February 2017)

“What was the glue that held this Tanglewood program together?… It didn’t take long — no longer than the opening number, the Saint-Saëns Oboe Sonata — to solve the puzzle. The answer: French oboist François Leleux, who cast himself prominently in four pieces… And when he was playing, he was unmistakably the force majeure, the star of the show.”

(Berkshire Eagle, July 2016)

“The Camerata Salzburg played under the direction of conductor and oboist Francois Leleux, who was as transparent and clear, as intense and focused as if this chamber orchestra were but a string quartet sitting on the podium”

(Dreh Punkt Kultur, March 2016)

“…there were certainly wonders in François Leleux’ account with the CBSO of the autumnal, delicious Oboe Concerto by Richard Strauss. His phrasing was mellifluous, and as open-air as the composer’s beloved Bavarian Alps; interchanges with orchestral soloists were sparkling and well dovetailed;…flourishes danced as though from panpipes, and he painted piquant shades of colour.”

(Birmingham Post, November 2014)

“The terrific French oboist Francois Leleux was artist in residence at this year’s Lammermuir Festival, and he used the opportunity to explore repertoire from Bach to Berio. He is a fearless, flawless player (during this recital he breezily turned pages with one hand while playing with the other). His sound is plush and enormous. It would be a treat to hear him in just about any music.”

(The Herald, Scotland, October 2014)