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 was released digitally on August 28, and the CD is available for purchase now.
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.”
Listen now.
The San Diego Symphony announces a major milestone in its history: the Orchestra’s first-ever European tour, taking place over nine days in spring 2027. Under the direction of Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare, the Symphony will perform five concerts in some of Europe’s most prestigious venues, introducing international audiences to the “San Diego Sound.”
This tour represents a significant moment of artistic arrival for the Symphony, reflecting years of growth, investment, and deep community connection. Since Payare’s appointment in 2019, the organization has expanded its national and international profile, bolstered by the transformation of the Jacobs Music Center and the opening of The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, which have helped redefine the region’s cultural landscape. The Orchestra’s artistic reputation has also been strengthened by international acclaim for Payare’s artistry and his palpable connection with orchestras and audiences, both in the concert hall and on recordings. The Orchestra’s recent Delos label recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, Leningrad—the first recording made in the newly renovated Jacobs Music Center—has further elevated its international profile, earning enthusiastic reviews for both the performance and the recording.
The tour opens April 28, 2027, at Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana, featuring Spanish pianist Javier Perianes performing Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. This program also includes Kauyumari by Grammy-winning composer Gabriela Ortiz, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein, and the Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin Suite by Béla Bartók.
The Symphony then continues to Toulouse, Hamburg, Paris, and Dublin where they will be joined by violinist Leonidas Kavakos performing Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Additional repertoire heard in these cities includes The Firebird Suite (1919) by Igor Stravinsky, highlighting the orchestra’s programmatic versatility.
“In Europe, a visiting orchestra’s performance represents more than a concert—it is a cultural exchange,” says Payare. “The San Diego Symphony has a voice with such brilliance and spirit, it should be heard in concert halls around the world.”
The 2027 European tour represents both an introduction and an offering: a chance to share the artistic energy, diversity, and cultural vitality of the San Diego region with audiences abroad. It also reflects a full-circle moment for the Symphony, which has long brought the world’s music to San Diego and now joins the global stage in return. This tour marks the beginning of a broader international presence for the San Diego Symphony in the years ahead.
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.
