Today, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal begins its 60th international tour, performing at European festivals in Edinburgh, Warsaw, Aarhus, and Hamburg under the direction of Payare. The OSM will be joined by several distinguished soloists for this tour featuring various programs. In two concerts at the Edinburgh International Festival, the OSM will perform Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s monumental Song of Hiawatha with the Festival Chorus. Indigenous sopranos Elisabeth St-Gelais and Emma Pennell will then join the orchestra in a performance of two Canadian works by Ana Sokolović and Ian Cusson, set to libretti by Indigenous poets Michelle Sylliboy and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein will also team up with the OSM in a performance of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot, which recently won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition. She will perform this same work with the OSM in Aarhus, during the orchestra’s first visit to Denmark, and again in Hamburg. On a final stop in Warsaw, Chopin will be celebrated in two concerts: on August 23, Canadian pianist Kevin Chen, second prize winner of the most recent Chopin Competition, will join the orchestra; then on August 24, Eric Lu, winner of the same competition, will share the stage.
Says Payare:
“To lead the OSM on its 60th international tour, within major European festivals, marks a deeply meaningful milestone—a moment to reflect on the Orchestra’s extraordinary journey while bringing our sound to places where musical tradition feels almost tangible.”
A Financial Times feature on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha is out now ahead of Rafael Payare and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s performances of the piece at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 19 (with an additional program at the festival on August 20).
“I had heard about the piece, but not conducted it or studied it,” says Payare. “I got the score and looked into the story of how much it was played at the beginning of the last century. The music is very tuneful and a bit Elgar-ish. You can see how Coleridge-Taylor [who was only in his early twenties] was evolving through the three different parts. So I thought how about we present in Edinburgh this view of how North America was viewed as a foreign land?
“At a time when the culture of amateur choral singing in England was so strong, Coleridge-Taylor was trying to give an opportunity to everybody who could sing to be part of it, as though he was taking them on a transatlantic voyage. It is mind-blowing that such a popular piece has been neglected so long. I am happy that we will be doing it some justice.”
Read the full piece here.
Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony will be a cornerstone of Rafael Payare’s performances with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM) this summer, in Quebec and on tour. They perform three programs at Quebec’s Festival de Lanaudière in July and August, with the first program featuring the Shostakovich along with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Gabriela Ortiz’s recent Grammy-winning Dzonot cello concerto, with dedicatee Alisa Weilerstein as soloist (July 18). Another staple of the OSM’s repertoire, Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, which they released on a 2024 album on Pentatone, is the focus of the second Festival program. Complementing that work are Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse, heard in Bernardino Molinari’s 1923 symphonic arrangement made from the solo piano original, and Berlioz’s song cycle Les nuits d’été featuring mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux (July 31). The third and final Festival de Lanaudière program will feature pianist Bruce Liu. He performs both Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto – his last completed work – on a program that also includes two movements of Penderecki’s Sinfonietta No. 1 and Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite (Aug 1).
Following those concerts, Payare leads the OSM on its 60th international tour, taking in major cities in Scotland, Poland, and Denmark before culminating at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie (Aug 19–28). Tour highlights include performances of both the Shostakovich and Strauss works; Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s monumental cantata trilogy, The Song of Hiawatha (Aug 19); a tribute to Canada’s Indigenous peoples by Canadian composers featuring works by Ana Sokolović and Ian Cusson (Aug 20); performances of Chopin’s two Piano Concertos by young pianists Kevin Chen (Aug 23) and Eric Lu (Aug 24); and Weilerstein’s reprising of her performance of Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot (Aug 20, 26 & 28).
For more information, visit the calendar.
Marking their first recording with Delos/Outhere Music (OH Music), the San Diego Symphony (SDSO) and Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare announce the release of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” recorded live in May 2025 in the recently renovated Jacobs Music Center and representing the first release to highlight the enhanced acoustics of the celebrated venue. The album will be available exclusively on Apple Music Classical for two months beginning Friday, June 26, coinciding with the opening night of the SDSO summer season at their acclaimed Rady Shell venue on the San Diego waterfront, where Payare and the orchestra perform an all-Russian program that opens with Shostakovich’s Festive Overture. The worldwide digital release of the album follows on August 28, and CDs will be available for purchase starting September 11.
Payare comments:
“There are works that test an orchestra not only in size or stamina, but in its ability to hold a vast musical and emotional landscape together over time. Shostakovich’s Seventh is one of those works. It demands power, certainly, but also patience, control, and the capacity to sustain tension across an immense arc. These are qualities I feel the San Diego Symphony can bring to it in a very compelling way. And in Jacobs Music Center, with its extraordinary acoustical richness and clarity, we have the kind of space that allows a work of this scale to speak with its full force and depth.
“I feel a very deep connection to Shostakovich’s music. It expresses brutality, oppression, and human resilience in a way that still feels painfully current, but what has always moved me is the extraordinary depth beneath the surface. In his music, there is often a sense of something withheld; as if behind the power and immediacy there is another voice, more private and more difficult to name. That tension, between what is said openly and what remains hidden, is part of what makes this music so powerful, and why it continues to reveal something new each time you return to it.”
Martha Gilmer, the President and CEO of the San Diego Symphony, adds:
“We are so excited to mark this milestone in our partnership with Outhere Music and its Delos label, along with the initial release on Apple Music Classical. Our conversations have reinforced a shared commitment to the highest standards of recording. Having listened to both the performance and the finished recording, I could not be more pleased with the result and the opportunities it creates for future recordings. It is so important for a wider audience to hear our orchestra in the newly renovated Jacobs Music Center. The artistry of our musicians and the leadership of Rafael Payare are a powerful combination, and I am happy that listeners around the world will now have the opportunity to experience it for themselves.”
Learn more here.
