Payare and OSM Reveal 2026/27 Season
Apr 1, 2026The 2026/27 season marks Rafael Payare’s fifth as Music Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. They will open OSM’s 93rd season in grand style with the expressive power of Mahler, continuing the cycle begun in 2022. The opening concert on September 16 and 17 will bring together Das klagende Lied (Song of Lamentation), an early work based on an epic tale, and excerpts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) with its highly refined instrumentation and musical exploration of the folk-tale universe.
On September 23, for the first time in over a decade, the OSM will welcome pianist Lang Lang in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5 under Payare’s direction. On October 21 and 22, Leonidas Kavakos joins the Orchestra on stage to play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, op. 35, in a program conducted by Payare, completed by Elysium by Canadian composer Samy Moussa and Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird. In December, Stravinsky’s Petrushka features in a program where the OSM welcomes German violinist Veronika Eberle, whom we will hear in Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 5.
On January 12 and 13, Payare and the OSM will usher in 2027 by welcoming celebrated soprano Renée Fleming, who will perform Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, the product of Fleming’s collaboration with National Geographic. This multimedia concert explores humanity’s relationship with its environment. The first movement of composer-in-residence Jimmy López’s Symphony no. 4 will also be a feature of this concert’s program.
April brings the return of the Mozart Festival, which threads together three different programs. On April 8 and 11, the piano takes center stage as Payare and the OSM join with award-winning performers Charles Richard-Hamelin, Meagan Milatz, and Kevin Chen for a rare event: a performance of the Concerto no. 7 for three pianos. In the week after, Mozart’s vocal and operatic works will take the spotlight, in two programs. First, make way for the Great Mass in C minor, the Exsultate, jubilate and the serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Then, on April 15 and 17, the cycle of Mozart/Da Ponte operas will reach its conclusion with Don Giovanni, featuring, among others, Michèle Lozier, Gustavo Castillo, and Jenny Daviet.
In May, cellist Alisa Weilerstein will join the OSM and Payare in three programs exploring the symphonic imagination of Richard Strauss. Finally, a resounding season finale is planned for May 25 and 26, with Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 and the world premiere of Jimmy López’s Symphony no. 6, “Monarch,” co-commissioned by the OSM and the San Diego Symphony.
“Every new season with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal opens a door on another musical adventure. In 2026–2027, music becomes storytelling, as each work tells its own story, stirs the imagination and draws out the orchestra’s colors. This season promises to be just like Montreal: vibrant, ambitious, teeming with life, and unique. Music invites us to hear the world differently … immerse yourselves in the best it has to offer.”—Rafael Payare, OSM Music Director
Learn more about the full season here.
