In 1989, a new orchestra was founded by Sir John Eliot Gardiner to bring to the music of the 19th and early 20th centuries the same stylistic accuracy found with the English Baroque Soloists.

One of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique's outstanding successes has undoubtedly been its acclaimed Berlioz interpretations. This series began with the Symphonie Fantastique, performed and filmed in the former Conservatoire de la Musique in Paris where the very first performance took place in December 1830. In 1993 the orchestra gave the first modern performances of the rediscovered Messe Solennelle, and ten years later the group performed L'enfance du Christ at the Proms and the first complete performances of Les Troyens at the Chatelet in Paris.

The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique has won plaudits for its complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, which has been viewed by many as the most important Beethoven recording since the arrival of CD. It has made critically acclaimed recordings of all the Schumann symphonies as well as music by Verdi, Weber and Mendelssohn. In 2003 the Orchestra took part in the making of a highly successful dramatisation of the writing of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony for BBC television.

In 2005 the ORR performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Mendelssohn in Holland and Spain and in May 2007, with violinist Viktoria Mullova, they toured Europe with a programme of Brahms's 1st and 2nd Symphonies and his Violin Concerto. In autumn 2007 they begin an ambitious project which will conclude in 2008 involving twenty-eight performances of five different Brahms-based programmes with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir. December 2007 saw the start of an exciting collaboration between the Monteverdi and Opera Comique, Paris: Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducted the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in eight fully-staged  performances of Emmanuel Chabrier's Opera bouffe, L'Etoile.