Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Classical Concert Listings

Program: Samy Moussa: Elysium; Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64; Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 Performers: Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal; Rafael Payare (conductor); Leonidas Kavakos (violin) Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and its brilliant music director Rafael Payare step onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage with Shostakovich’s powerful, energetic, and darkly intense Tenth Symphony. Following a performance of Shostakovich’s 10th on Montréal’s 2022 tour, Bachtrack wrote that “Payare’s twitchy baton...dug into the work’s spirit of grim survival against adversity. It was composed in the wake of Stalin’s death, the ferocious second movement often described as a musical portrait of the dictator. Payare took it at a lightning lick, a bundle of energy on the podium.” Samy Moussa’s otherworldly and mythological Elysium opens the program, followed by one of the most treasured violin concertos of all time performed by Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos—whose “talent dazzles from the first notes” ( Bachtrack ).