Journalist Clive Paget wrote a substantial profile of Rafael Payare for the July 2025 issue of BBC Music Magazine.
It was the Viennese critic Hermann Bahr who likened Mahler’s arrival in a hotel lobby to a gust of wind forcing open a window, or water bursting from a pipe. There’s something similarly elemental about Rafael Payare, though in our case we are meeting in a less-than-glamorous back room at the Royal Opera House. The Venezuelan is in town to rehearse Puccini’s Turandot, and despite having had his nose to the ice princess’s grindstone for seven-or-so hours he shows no signs of flagging.
Animated, turbo-charged even (at one point he apologises, entirely unnecessarily, for his own exuberance), Payare marries charm with thoughtfulness. Beneath the luxuriant shock of hair, there’s a calm, bespectacled profile. He laughs a lot – sometimes uproariously – and he’s a perceptive observer of his peers. To complete the Mahlerian analogy, he’s a noted authority on the late-Romantictradition, as evidenced by recent recordings of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande.
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The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal unveiled its 2025–2026 season, which is Rafael Payare’s 4th season as Music Director. The OSM will be joined by an array of renowned artists from near and far, including many anticipated return performances and a great diversity of repertoires. This will be a season of symphonic masterworks, symphonic happy hours, music and film concerts, over-the-top éclaté concerts, POP concerts, and concerts for young audiences. Our public will discover, or rediscover works by Mozart, Brahms, Moussa, Stravinsky, Gougeon, Shostakovich, and of course, Mahler, performed by distinguished guests including Barbara Hannigan, Emanuel Ax, Véronique Gens, Joseph Tawadros and James Ehnes.
Presenting a variety of themes and a host of renowned, emerging, and culturally diverse artists, the 2025–2026 season opens a wide window on the world. Continuing the artistic journey begun since my arrival at the OSM, this programming brings together essential classics and new discoveries. The OSM’s educational mission also takes on anew dimension with the Programme El Sistema OSM, inspired by my own educational background and providing young people with rewarding musical training through group practice. This season will beautifully epitomize the joy of playing together and of sharing music that lives. —Rafael Payare, OSM Music Director
After delighting audiences in Europe and at the Maison symphonique with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the OSM and Rafael Payare will open the 25–26 season in grand style with the same composer’s La damnation de Faust, a captivating and powerfully emotional lyrical drama.
In October and in February, Payare will move forward with his Mahler cycle begun in 2022.OSM audiences will first hear the composer’s Symphony no. 9, then his Symphony no. 4.The Shostakovitch cycle also continues, with a performance of the “Leningrad” Symphony no. 7 in April 2026, conducted by Rafael Payare. Beethoven’s Symphony no. 8 will open this concert. Also, under Payare’s direction, on April 22, the Orchestra will perform Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, as well as the world premiere of a work commissioned by the OSM to Denis Gougeon and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 2 featuring Bruce Liu as soloist.
In December, Rafael Payare will be joined by the amazing Dutch violinist Simone Lamsmain Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, followed by Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. In January, Emanuel Ax will be the OSM and Payare’s guest for a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3. This concert will also feature the world premiere of a commissioned work by British Canadian composer Isabella Gellis as well as Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 5. In March, Rafael Payare and the OSM continue their cycle of Mozart operas to libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte. This season, audiences will hear The Marriage of Figaro. In May 2026, to close the season, Rafael Payare will conduct Wagner’s The Ring Without Words, preceded by Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, performed by the legendary Yefim Bronfman.
To explore the full season, visit osm.ca.
This spring, Rafael Payare returns to London’s Royal Opera House to lead Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role of Puccini’s Turandot (March 19–April 4). The cast also includes SeokJong Baek as Calaf, Anna Princeva and Gemma Summerfield alternating the role of Liù, and Adam Palka as Timur.
After Payare’s 2023 debut at the Royal Opera House conducting Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, the critics were enthralled, with Bachtrack declaring: “It was light, it was airy, it was enthusiastically accented, it was rhythmically on the nail and it elicited the biggest ovation for an opera overture I can remember – and deservedly so, because it set the scene for an evening of buffa entertainment that never faltered.” The Guardian agreed, finding that Payare’s “perky, pacy reading is full of light and shade, with nimbly sprung rhythms crisp as an iceberg lettuce.”
Find more performance details and tickets here.
The San Diego Symphony and Music Director Rafael Payare have announced the detailed programs of the 2025-26 Jacobs Music Center season. This will be the second season in the orchestra’s new indoor home, a nearly 100-year-old theater that underwent a complete renovation before reopening in 2024 with superior acoustics, beautiful aesthetics and a wide array of works that demonstrate the venue’s new flexible presentation capabilities.
The 2025-26 Jacobs Music Center season will feature 21 programs on the Jacobs Masterworks series, including eight works new to San Diego Symphony, 11 concertos, 19 symphonies, a two-week Brahms Festival, audience favorites, and rarely heard works. Also, as a passionate, renowned champion of Mahler, Payare has programmed two of the composer’s works on the season.
The season opens with Payare leading the orchestra, vocal soloists, and a children’s chorus in a program of French works featuring Maurice Ravel’s one-act opera The Child and the Magical Spells (L’enfant et les sortilèges) directed by the acclaimed British composer and director Gerard McBurney; Claude Debussy’s ballet score The Box of Toys, and his reimagining of an amorous trip to Aphrodite’s birthplace in The Joyful Island (October 3 and 5).
Next, Payare conducts French composer Emmanuel Chabrier’s rhapsody for orchestra, España, coupled with Peruvian composer Jimmy López’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Ephemerae. This work marks the start of López’s two years as Composer-in-Residence. Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 closes the program (October 11-12).
In November, the orchestra performs a selection of Gustav Mahler’s Germanic folk songs The Boy’s Magical Horn, with baritone Matthias Goerne; and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, titled “Romantic” (November 7 and 8). The next concert opens with Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides and features Augustin Hadelich in Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, followed by Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (November 14-15). Both programs are led by Payare.
The new year kicks off with Payare conducting two symphonies in one concert, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 (January 24-25). In the following program, he leads Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 (January 31 and February 1).
In late February and March, San Diego Symphony begins its two-week Brahms Festival comprising some of the beloved composer’s most iconic pieces offered in four programs conducted by Payare. The festival will feature Brahms’ A German Requiem with vocal soloists Julie Boulianne and Michael Sumuel and the San Diego Symphony Chorus (February 27 and March 1); the Symphonies No. 1 and 2 (February 28); the Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos, and the Symphony No. 4 (March 6); and the Symphony No. 3 with an encore performance of the Violin Concerto (March 7).
Rafael Payare returns in May to lead the Masterworks season’s three final programs: The first one features composer Gabriela Ortiz’s new cello concerto, Dzonot, written for and performed by Alisa Weilerstein; and Richard Strauss’ tone poem, A Hero’s Life (May 9-10). The May 15-16 program features Peru Negro, composed by San Diego Symphony’s new Composer-in-Residence, Jimmy López; followed by Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto with Jeff Thayer, the Deborah Pate and John Forrest Concertmaster Chair of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra; and Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3, “Scottish.” The last concert offers two masterpieces of the late Romantic period: Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, inspired by Nietzsche’s poem; and Bela Bartók’s one-act drama Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill and bass to be announced (May 22 and 24).
For more details, visit sandiegosymphony.org.
