Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Rafael Payare

Rafael Payare conducts a scintillating Le Sacre du Printemps in a program that also showcases Bruce Liu's bravura Tchaikovsky. 

Can one be artful and musical while playing at maximum volume? In a program of López, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, Rafael Payare and the Pittsburgh Symphony answer a resounding yes.

Rafael Payare boldly programmes Kinan Azmeh's Suite for Improvisor and Orchestra in a diverse concert bill that also features long-standing Principal Flute Timothy Hutchins.

Frank Peter Zimmermann joins the orchestra to bring Frank Martin’s seldom heard Violin Concerto back to the Netherlands. 

Concertmaster David Kim performs Tchaikovsky's ever-popular Violin Concerto, and conductor Rafael Payare revisits Falla's El amor brujo.

The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM), conductor Rafael Payare, and violin soloist Simone Lamsma joined forces in a program that featured seminal works by two musical titans who settled in the United States after fleeing Europe in the mid-twentieth century.

Rafael Payare leads a fevered account of desire, damnation and sonic grandeur, ably supported by Karen Cargill and Andrew Staples. 

Andrei Șerban’s 1984 staging of Turandot may the oldest production left in The Royal Opera’s stable, but there's life in the old horse yet. 

Alisa Weilerstein plays Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante before her husband conducts a key work from the OSM's history, Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé. 

Rafael Payare, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Daniil Trifonov warm up Berlin audiences with a high-temperature concert at the Philharmonie.

Rafael Payare, Anthony McGill and the New York Philharmonic create some extraordinary moments in the course of an overall uneven concert of Gubaidulina, Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

The US premiere of Jimmy López Bellido's Ephemerae, a Philadelphia Orchestra co-commission, leads the listener by the nose through a world of olfactory sensations.

The youthful phenomenon mesmerises his Montreal audience in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. 

Two outstanding performances by young singers light up a splendidly crafted revival of Caurier and Leiser's colourful production.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal conclude their first European tour for three decades with sardonic Shostakovich under new Music Director Rafael Payare. 

Rafael Payare launches the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal's 2022-2023 season on a massive scale with Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. 

2021 International Chopin Piano Competition winner Bruce Liu dazzles in Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Rafael Payare and the OSM at its summer festival.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Rafael Payare offer up a thrilling Beethoven 9 to close the season.

A night to remember for Montreal orchestral music devotees as Daniil Trifonov joins the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and conductor Rafael Payare.

OSM Music Director Designate Rafael Payare elicits some gorgeous music-making in Tchikovsky and Sibelius. 

The OSM's Music Director-designate emphasises the Brahmsian aspects of Dvořák's splendid Seventh Symphony. 

Just named as Music Director Designate, the Venezuelan took to the helm in Montréal for a concert of Berlioz and Brahms. 

From the podium, Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare’s fine direction and unmitigated athleticism were part and parcel of the excitement.

Cast changes and a revival director who sharpens up the action make all the difference to this revival of Rossini's *Barber of Seville* in Glyndebourne's opening weekend. 

Mozart’s early youthful 29th Symphony felt rather misplaced in this otherwise solemn concert from Rafael Payare, Ulster Orchestra and the Belfast Philharmonic Choir. 

Reaching the climax of his exploration of Shostakovich’s “war symphonies”, Rafael Payare and the Ulster Orchestra pit Strauss’ epic tone-poem against the colossal “Leningrad” Symphony.

Widmann, Mendelssohn and Beethoven draw a full house to the Ulster Hall. Rafael Payare leads the Ulster Orchestra confidently, but Veronika Eberle steals the show.

Rafael Payare demonstrates his mastery of a late Romantic score and together with the RPO partners Lise de la Salle in an early piano concerto by Mozart.

Rafael Payare and the Ulster Orchestra present a programme of music that looks both backwards and forwards from composers who were musical visionaries.

Dorothea Röschmann has a soaring silvery line when needed (she is a famous Marschallin).

In the second instalment of his Strauss and Shostakovich exploration, Payare directs the Ulster Orchestra in two hugely contrasting works premiered in times of conflict.

Husband and wife join together with the Ulster Orchestra in Ulster Hall, at the beginning of a year-long féile pairing the music of two twentieth-century giants of symphonic repertoire. 

...the perpetuum mobile character building to a raucously joyous finale that elicited genuine, generous applause.

In the climax of his penultimate season Payare conducted the Ulster Orchestra in a programme of Britten, Mahler and Shostakovich. 

Rafael Payare, in his first appearance with the RPO, has musical encounters with Don Juan and Don Quixote, and a Mozart symphony provides a suitable contrast.

Rafael Payare contrasts a stentorian Brahms Symphony 4 with colorful French scores, including a scintillating Shéhérazade.

Stephen Hough stuns with an emotive reading of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, while the Ulster Orchestra under Rafael Payare were on fine form for the season’s finale.

Alina Ibragimove reigns supreme in Symphony Hall with Brahms' Violin Concerto as Ulster Orchestra srtuggle to find the depth of emotion Sibelius deserves in Symphony No 1

The Venezuelan maestro conducts a programme of early 20th-century works with the BBC Philharmonic .

Strindberg, Munch, Grieg, and Kierkegaard eke out a living in a loft in Stockholm among the joys and sorrows of love and loss.

Rafael Payare's energetic conducting of his Ulster Orchestra in Tchaikovsky, Haydn and Hellawell showed how fortunate Belfast is to still have this skilled musical force. 

Tonight's concert was listed under the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's "Indulge" series, and it was indeed an occasion for feeling well and truly spoilt.

Alisa Weilerstein and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Payare rendered a thrilling performance of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto in Leeds.

Much-loved favourites wrapped around an assured early Beethoven piano concerto with Elisabeth Leonskaja.

Even Emperor Josef II would have thought this was a bad idea. The real-life monarch depicted in Peter Shaffer’s fictional play Amadeus quite memorably forbade ballet in his court operas. But the absurdity of the dancers carrying on with no music playing in Mozart’s Act III convinced the Emperor that he was in the wrong.

Si le pianiste a livré une interprétation superlative du Concerto de Schumann, l'orchestre québécois et son directeur musical ont été moins convaincants dans le reste du programme.

Un programme harmonieux, couronné d’une œuvre exaltante, un enchaînement sensible, une mise en scène efficace, des prestations investies : l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal a réservé à son public un concert mémorable.

Rafael Payare préside, avec un style à la fois sérieux et détendu, à l’introduction antéchronologique dans le langage hexagonal avec Claude Debussy, puis Camille Saint-Saëns et enfin Hector Berlioz.

Rafael Payare, chef vénézuélien offre une vision contrastée du Concerto pour orchestre de Bartók, sans pour autant mener le troisième concerto de Beethoven à bon port : la jeunesse de David Fray n'aura pas su donner l'amplitude nécessaire à l'œuvre du génie allemand... dommage car l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande sonna bien... 

Eine starke Orchesterleistung lässt mit Schostakowitschs Zehnter anfängliche Unvollkommenheiten vergessen.