Montreal Symphony Orchestra's Rafael Payare on music's role in the concert hall and beyond
From the impeccable sophistication of its repertoire to community, education and even health benefits, the MSO is thinking deeply about its identity and purpose both on and off stage under maverick Venezuelan Music Director Rafael Payare. Ahead of two EIF shows, he talks to David Kettle.
Rafael Payare, Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, is particularly looking forward to his band’s two-concert visit to the Edinburgh International Festival when we speak. As a whisky connoisseur, a trip to Scotland means, of course, a trip to the home of the water of life.
“There’s a big culture of whisky drinking in Venezuela, where I grew up,” Payare explains, “but it’s usually blended whisky.” He discovered his love for malts over the sea in Northern Ireland, during his years as Music Director of the Ulster Orchestra. “We started a whisky club in Belfast,” he continues, “and we decided to dedicate ourselves to Islay whiskies – Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and then we tried Octomore, which is like a big hug from a mama bear.
Payare is clearly passionate about whisky, and he’s equally passionate about the focal role he inhabits in Montreal’s classical world, into which he’s thrown himself since joining the Orchestra in 2021. “It’s an incredible city, and I feel like the whole place has really embraced me and my family.” He and his wife – cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who’s soloist in one of the Orchestra’s concerts, as well as giving a solo recital of Bach’s cello suites – are now settled residents. “Our two young daughters are speaking French at school, I speak to them in Spanish, and Alisa speaks to them in English.”
And though Montrealers are arguably more relaxed about speaking English than in other parts of francophone Québec, language remains a sensitive political and cultural issue. “Before I began as Music Director,” explains Payare, “the Orchestra told me it was crucial for me to learn French, so I threw myself into courses and tried my best. It was important to be able to express myself and understand the rhythm of the city. It’s not only about being able to communicate with the Orchestra, but also about finding my place in Montreal, and Québec.”
Enjoying The Scotsman's coverage of the Edinburgh festivals? For just £2 a month you can get unlimited access to scotsman.com plus 2-for-1 Fringe tickets. For details visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions
Four seasons into the role, Payare has undoubtedly found his place. He’s also stamped his mark on the Orchestra’s repertoire, already renowned for its impeccable Gallic sophistication under long-standing music director Charles Dutoit. “I was keen to move more into Austro-German music, which is my core repertoire – we started with a Mahler symphony cycle, and I also thought the Orchestra needed to be playing Bruckner, Schoenberg and Strauss.” Edinburgh audiences get to hear the fruits of Payare’s repertoire building with Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben on 20 August.
As an alumnus of Venezuela’s pioneering El sistema programme – which harnesses intensive, immersive music making for children as a means of social inclusion – Payare has also played a central role in the MSO’s own El sistema-inspired project, currently focused on more deprived areas in northern Montreal. “We expanded it into three schools,” explains Payare, “and my idea is that it should go everywhere. We’re also working with the music conservatoires in Québec – at the end of every season, I work with an orchestra made up of top students.”
Alongside high-profile concerts in its downtown home, this is a whole other side to the MSO’s identity. “Our community work has always been extremely important,” explains Chief Artistic Officer Marianne Perron. “We want every Québecer to feel a link with the Orchestra, whether that’s coming to a concert, hearing a free performance, or even seeing MSO musicians in a care home, for example.” A more recent initiative has allowed local doctors to prescribe MSO concerts for patients with physical or mental health conditions – a project particularly close to the heart of Chief Executive, Mélanie La Couture: “I used to be head of the Montreal Heart Institute, and when I joined the Orchestra, I could immediately see there were links between music and managing stress. We want music to be an ingredient in the care packages that doctors can offer to their patients.”
Community connections, intensive education, health benefits: the MSO is clearly thinking deeply about its identity and purpose, both in the concert hall and beyond. Some similarly fundamental questions are woven closely into the Orchestra’s pair of Edinburgh concerts, not least issues of representation and authenticity. The first revisits Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s lavish cantata trilogy The Song of Hiawatha, once a beloved British audience favourite – it famously sold out annual Royal Albert Hall runs during the 1920s and 30s – but nowadays rarely heard. It’s a work by a mixed-race British composer that sets verse by a white American poet – Henry Longfellow – based on Native American themes and stories. “Of course, it’s complete cultural appropriation,” smiles Perron, “but it’s good to talk about that, and at the beginning of the concert we’ll have a presentation about what the piece represents.”
Similar questions lurk behind the Montreal SO’s second concert, which showcases two works involving Indigenous Canadian artists. Mi’kmaq writer Michelle Sylliboy supplies the text for Belgrade-born Québécoise composer Ana Sokolović’s You Can Die Properly Now, while Innu poet Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine has written the words for Québécois composer Ian Cusson’s Un cri s’élève en moi. “We’ve been working with Indigenous artists since the early 2000s,” explains Perron, “and it’s been an important strand of our work to create connections, not only between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, but also between Indigenous communities themselves.”
The broader context is one of reconciliation, the wide-ranging project to repair relations between the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples after centuries of colonisation, adopted by premier Justin Trudeau’s government following a 2015 report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Sokolović’s You Can Die Properly Now, in particular, shines a bright light on a particularly traumatic issue: the widespread abuse and killings of Indigenous children that took place in Canada’s notorious residential schools.
“It’s a subject that’s very present culturally,” explains Perron. “It’s an example of – well, our dark side. We know that the image of a Canadian is that we’re very nice, but I think it’s important that we’re honest about what happened.”
“It’s a really tough subject,” Payare agrees, “for listeners, and also for musicians in the Orchestra. It’s not easy stuff to deal with, but through music we can send a message of acknowledgement and understanding, and that’s maybe how we can help.”
To community, education and health, we should add representing its nation to the MSO’s wide-ranging work – not only showcasing Canada’s musical expertise worldwide, but also reflecting the country’s sense of honest self-reflection. It’s an orchestra with an understandably international reputation, headed by a Music Director of uncommon insight and enthusiasm. And it’s also an organisation that’s resolutely reimagining its own aims and purposes.
Rafael Payare conducts the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in Coleridge-Taylor’s The Song of Hiawatha (19 August), and in works by Ana Sokolović, Ian Cusson, Gabriela Ortiz and Richard Strauss (20 August). www.eif.co.uk
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.