Rafael Payare’s summer 2026: Shostakovich 7 recording with San Diego Symphony on Delos; Festival de Lanaudière and European tour with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
(July 2026) — Rafael Payare – “a conductor of considerable grace and considerable swagger, making the two go unusually yet inexorably together” (Los Angeles Times) – has been Music and Artistic Director of California’s San Diego Symphony (SDSO) since 2019 and Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra/OSM) since 2021. With the SDSO he has a new album, their first recordingwith Delos / Outhere Music (OH Music), of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” recorded live in May 2025 in San Diego’s recently renovated Jacobs Music Center and representing the first release captured in the new acoustics of the celebrated venue. The album is currently available exclusively on Apple Music Classical, with the worldwide digital release on August 28 and CDs available for purchase starting September 11. Meanwhile, this summer Payare and the OSM perform three programs in Quebec’s Festival de Lanaudière, featuring Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10; Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben; cellist Alisa Weilerstein performing Gabriela Ortiz’s Grammy Award-winning Dzonot concerto, written for her; and pianist Bruce Liu in concertos by both Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. 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 Sokolovićand 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).
SDSO Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 on Delos
As an upbeat to their 2026–27 season, Payare and the San Diego Symphony release their first album on the Delos label: Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, nicknamed the “Leningrad” Symphony. Dedicated to the composer’s hometown and begun there after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the symphony was completed and premiered – after Shostakovich and his family were forced to evacuate – in the midst of the 872-day siege of Leningrad itself that was to claim between 1.5 and 2 million lives. The epic work, which lasts between 70 and 80 minutes in performance, is still often played at Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the siege are buried. Yet the composer made it clear – as a friend of his related to biographer Elizabeth Wilson – that the work was also a broader statement about “all forms of terror, slavery, and the bondage of the spirit.”
The music of Shostakovich has long been a major focus for Payare, not only with the SDSO and OSM but as a guest conductor. This past February, he made his debut with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw conducting Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, and recently performed the “Leningrad” Symphony with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. When Payare and the SDSO recorded the same composer’s Eleventh Symphony, “The Year 1905,” in 2022, it was described as “a mandatory purchase” by Fanfaremagazine, while Gramophone found the recording to be “right up there with the best we have,” continuing: “Payare is on top of the work’s filmic atmospherics and graphic excitement … marking its territories with icy silences and visceral percussion.”
OSM at Festival de Lanaudière
Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony will also be a cornerstone of Payare’s performances with the 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, an evocation of the subterranean rivers, caves and stunning wildlife of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, 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 Canadian mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux(July 31). The third and final Festival de Lanaudière program will feature Canadian pianist Bruce Liu, the winner of the 2021 Chopin Competition in Warsaw praised by BBC Music Magazine for “playing of breathtaking beauty.” 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).
OSM European tour (Aug 19–28)
Following the performances at the Festival de Lanaudière, Payare leads the OSM on its 60th international tour, with stops in Edinburgh; Warsaw; Aarhus, Denmark, marking the first time OSM has ever performed in that country; and Hamburg. Several works in the tour repertoire are drawn from the Quebec performances, including Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, as well as Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse and Gabriela Ortiz’s Dzonot concerto performed by Weilerstein.
Appearing at the Edinburgh International Festival for only the third time since 1976, the orchestra presents two programs themed to Indigenous peoples of Canada and the U.S., starting with Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s monumental cantata trilogy, The Song of Hiawatha, based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem that draws on Native American legends. Marking the work’s first Edinburgh International Festival performance, the concert features Nigerian American soprano Francesca Chiejina, Scottish tenor Nicky Spence, and British baritone ChristopherMaltman. Though seldom performed now, Coleridge-Taylor’s work became a sensation in the early 20th century, regularly selling out the Royal Albert Hall. London-based oboist and researcher Uchenna Ngwe, a specialist in Black British classical music, will introduce the work’s history (Aug 19).
The OSM’s second Edinburgh program features two new vocal works paying tribute to Canada’s Indigenous peoples by Canadian composers Ana Sokolović and Ian Cusson. Sung by Indigenous sopranos Emma Pennell and Elisabeth St-Gelais respectively, the pieces are set to libretti by Indigenous poets Michelle Sylliboy and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine (Aug 20).
The two concerts in Warsaw feature special programming for that city. Joining the performances are the second and first prize winners of the most recent Chopin Competition, Canadian pianist Kevin Chen and American pianist Eric Lu, performing Chopin’s Second and First Piano Concertos, respectively. The first concert also includes Penderecki’s Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings, in tribute to the late Polish composer who was present when OSM last performed in Poland in 2018 with then-Music Director Kent Nagano (Aug 23 & 24).
Rafael Payare: summer 2026 engagements
July 18
Joliette, Quebec
Festival de Lanaudière
Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheater
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
BEETHOVEN: Overture to Egmont, Op. 84
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93
July 31
Joliette, Quebec
Festival de Lanaudière
Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheater
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Marie-Nicole Lemieux, mezzo-soprano
DEBUSSY: L’isle joyeuse (arr. Molinari)
BERLIOZ: Les nuits d’été, Op. 7
R. STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), Op. 40
Aug 1
Joliette, Quebec
Festival de Lanaudière
Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheater
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Bruce Liu, piano
PENDERECKI: Sinfonietta No. 1, mvmts I & II
PROKOFIEV: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C, Op. 26
TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 75, TH 65
PROKOFIEV: Scythian Suite, Op. 20
August 19–28
OSM 60th International Tour – Europe
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Aug 19
Edinburgh, Scotland
Usher Hall
Uchenna Ngwe, introduction
Francesca Chiejina, soprano
Nicky Spence, tenor
Christopher Maltman, baritone
Choir of the Edinburgh International Festival
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR: The Song of Hiawatha
Aug 20
Edinburgh, Scotland
Usher Hall
Ana SOKOLOVIĆ (text Michelle Sylliboy): You can die properly now (Emma Pennell, soprano)
Ian CUSSON (text Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine): Un cri s’élève en moi (Élisabeth St-Gelais, soprano)
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot (Alisa Weilerstein, cello)
R. STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), Op. 40
Aug 23
Warsaw, Poland
National Philharmonic
PENDERECKI: Sinfonietta No. 1 for Strings
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 21 (Kevin Chen, piano)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93
Aug 24
Warsaw, Poland
National Philharmonic
DEBUSSY: L’isle joyeuse
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 11 (Eric Lu, piano)
R. STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), Op. 40
Aug 26
Aarhus, Denmark
Musikhuset
DEBUSSY: L’isle joyeuse
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot (Alisa Weilerstein, cello)
R. STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), Op. 40
Aug 28
Hamburg, Germany
Elbphilharmonie
DEBUSSY: L’isle joyeuse
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot (Alisa Weilerstein, cello)
R. STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”), Op. 40