2025-26 Season Highlights

Aug 18, 2025

Rafael Payare conducts full seasons in 2025–26 as Music Director of both California’s San Diego Symphony (SDS) and Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM), while also debuting with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, returning to the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras and Pittsburgh Symphony, and much more.

After last season’s European tour with OSM featuring Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Symphonie fantastique – culminating in live performances in Montreal that were recorded and will be released on the Pentatone label this fall (Oct 17) – Payare opens his fourth season as OSM Music Director with the same composer’s The Damnation of Faust (Sep 17, 18). Payare then continues the Mahler cycle he launched in 2022 with the composer’s Ninth Symphony (Oct 15, 16), followed by the Fourth Symphony in the new year (Feb 11–13), sharing the bill with Jimmy López’s Perú Negro and Billy Childs’s Diaspora, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra.

Payare also conducts a program featuring OSM principal trombonist James Box in Samy Moussa’s “Yericho” Concerto and OSM principal cello Brian Manker in Bloch’s Schelomo (Oct 22, 25); an OSM-commissioned world premiere by British-Canadian composer Isabella Gellis, sharing the bill with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto featuring Emanuel Ax and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony (Jan 15, 17); programs featuring virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh (March 11, 12); a specially narrated version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro featuring Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in the title role and Anna Prohaska as Susanna (March 18, 20); and much more.

Embarking on his seventh season as Music Director of the San Diego Symphony, Payare opens with a theatrical celebration of France and French music, featuring Debussy’s The Joyful Isle and The Box of Toys, his charming ballet score for children, juxtaposed with a semi-staging of Ravel’s comic fantasy The Child and the Magical Spells (L’enfant et les sortilèges) (Oct 3, 5).

Composer-in-Residence Jimmy López is represented by two works with the SDS this season: his piano concerto Ephemerae, written for and featuring Spanish pianist Javier Perianes (Oct 11, 12); and his Perú Negro, on a program with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and Berg’s Violin Concerto with soloist Jeff Thayer (May 15, 16). The SDS has also co-commissioned, along with OSM, López’s Sixth Symphony, which is inspired by the migratory patterns of Monarch butterflies and will premiere in 2026–27.

In spring of 2026, Payare leads the San Diego Symphony in a two-week Brahms Festival, comprising four programs of iconic works. The festival will feature Brahms’s A German Requiem with soloists Julie Boulianne and Michael Sumuel and the San Diego Symphony Chorus (Feb 27; March 1); Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 (Feb 28); and Symphonies Nos. 4 and 3 in consecutive performances, each paired with the Violin Concerto featuring Leonidas Kavakos (March 6, 7).

Also in the spring, Payare makes his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut leading violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto, on a program with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem, inspired by Miloš Macourek’s The Little Piece of Chalk, an allegory of artistic perseverance (Feb 18–19).​​ Following these performances, Payare conducts the Shostakovich by itself in the orchestra’s “Essentials” series (Feb 20).

Payare’s first guest appearance of the season is with Japan’s NHK Symphony, where he conducts soloist Emanuel Ax in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 along with Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben and Schumann’s incidental music to Manfred (Nov 20, 21). The following week, Payare guest conducts the UK’s Philharmonia in Leicester and London, performing Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture and Symphonie fantastique, along with the London premiere of Philharmonia’s Featured Composer Gabriela Ortiz’s trumpet concerto Altar de Bronce. Celebrated Latin Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan trumpeter Pacho Flores, for whom the concerto was composed, is the featured soloist (Nov 26, 27).

Payare’s other guest appearances this season include return engagements with The Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

For full season details, visit the calendar.