French orchestra plays Daft Punk at the Proms

Proms audiences were surprised and delighted when a French orchestra returned to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall with an unexpected encore – Daft Punk’s Get Lucky.

To some, it may have seemed like an unlikely choice of repertoire. Les Siècles is a period ensemble, which means that its musicians play on historic instruments appropriate for the era of the music they are performing – in this case, the late 19th century.

Meanwhile, Daft Punk is an electronic dance music outfit whose biggest hits combine elements of house, disco, techno, funk, rock and synthpop.

Still, the enigmatic duo are among the biggest French musical exports of the past 25 years. So perhaps it’s fitting that they should feature in an all-French programme that included the Romantic big-hitters Camille Saint‐Saëns, Léo Delibes, César Franck and Édouard Lalo.

The Get Lucky arrangement (which also contained the hook from Around The World) was written especially for the occasion by Félix Roth, the conductor's 20-year-old son. His father, François-Xavier Roth, introduced the encore as an example of when "the French, in another music, look at America".

The surprise performance calls to mind the “other” Daft Punk moment of the summer...

On 14 July, a French military band broke with tradition at a Bastille Day parade by performing an impeccably choreographed, three-minute Daft Punk medley based on the Grammy Award-winning arrangement by US a cappella stars Pentatonix. Their audience included French President Emmanuel Macron and his US counterpart Donald Trump.

Wednesday's Proms audience seemed much more au fait with Daft Punk than the world leaders. There was a ripple of laughter in the Royal Albert Hall when the verse, like the legend of the phoenix, emerged in the woodwinds – and an uncharacteristic amount of movement from Prommers in the arena as the strings and brass launched into the chorus.

You can hear the whole of Prom 42: Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth on the Radio 3 website.