Nicolas Roudier was born in 1994 in Besançon, France. As the son of a pianoforte player, he grew up in an early music environment, surrounded by period instruments. He began playing modern horn at age 4 with Walter Bellagamba. In 2007 he won First Prize at the Artistic Competition of Epinal, and then studied with Pierre Moragues (Paris’ Opera) from 2009. In 2012, Nicolas became a student of Phil Myers (New York Philharmonic) in Lausanne’s HEMU, Switzerland, where he completed a Bachelor degree in 2015 and a Master degree in 2018. He subsequently turned to historical horns and went to study at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with Teunis van der Zwart. In 2020 he graduated with a second Master’s in Early Music, and in 2021 with the Artist’s Certificate.
Still based in The Hague, Nicolas performs nowadays with many of the most renowned European orchestras and ensembles, on both modern and historical horns : Dresdner Festspielorchester, The Orchestra of the 18th Century, Freiburger Barockorchester, Concentus Musicus Wien, Armonia Atenea, the Dutch National Opera, Apollo Ensemble, etc. He is a regular member of Das Neue Mannheimer Orchester. He played under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington, Hidemi Suzuki, René Jacobs, Ivor Bolton, Kent Nagano and many others. In 2022 he performed Bach’s first Brandenburg Concerto at the Edinburgh International Festival with Richard Egarr, and again with Red Dot Baroque for the premiere in Singapore in 2023. Since then, he is part of the Wagner-Lesarten project, the first production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen on period instruments.
Apart from his playing, Nicolas also teaches privately since 2017 and discovered himself a passion for transmitting his knowledge and love for his instruments. Learn more about the teaching here.
Nicolas is especially fascinated by historical horns, their history, diversity and impact on interpretation ; he gathered a collection of some 20 original horns from the late 18th century to the present and he plays them all in concert, matching repertoire and instruments in a large panel of colours, styles and techniques. Since 2019, Nicolas’ true passion lies in playing horn and pianoforte repertoire from late classical to romanticism in unique historically informed performances. He shared the stage many times with historical keyboard specialist Anders Muskens. Learn more about the Muskens-Roudier Duo here.
Nicolas is also a researcher. Following his passion for early horns and willing to expand borders, he realised in November 2019 the very first recording of a complete piece on an original horn from Mozart’s time (Anton Kerner 1760) for the purposes of his Master thesis. He was awarded several special academic prizes for his works, and appeared as a lecturer in REMA’s 2020 Early Music Summit and the 2021 Historical Brass Society Symposium. Nicolas is also currently compiling an inventory of a private collection of rare original music scores from the mid-XVIIIth century to the XIXth century. This has eventually led to the creation of his own music publishing company, Artescripta. He is the co-organizer of Les Concerts du Temps Retrouvé, a private concert series in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, France, as well as the co-founder of the ensemble Harmos Winds.
He was supported in his research and musical production by the Adriana Jacoba Foundation, the Countess of Bylandt Foundation and the Dutch Performing Arts Fund in Netherlands.
