I, too, feel like I’m floating in a world of sound and fantasy – for I have joined Payare and his musicians for three dates on the OSM’s European tour. Starting here in Germany’s capital, my assignment is to accompany them as they then travel on to Amsterdam and Vienna. This isn’t simply a chance to see star-in-the-making Payare conduct in these cities’ legendary concert halls (“dream castles,” he calls them). It’s also an opportunity to immerse myself in each metropolis’ classic grand-tour offerings: museum masterpieces, regal parks, art nouveau cafés and architectural splendours. I’ll amble around the cities’ centres while listening to orchestral pieces that epitomize them, as Parsifal does for Berlin. The soundtrack we choose for a trip invariably colours our perspective on the destination visited – and classical symphonies will chiaroscuro much of my time on this tour.

For Payare, every journey is shaped by melody, as he makes music wherever he goes. “The passion is less for travel and more for performing with the orchestra,” he clarifies. His Berlin OSM show is, in several ways, a homecoming. Not only has Payare conducted at the Berliner Philharmoniker in the past – he’s also been ein Berliner himself until recently. Before our departure, he suggested meeting in Mitte so he could show me the street (Gartenstrasse) where he lived for much of the previous decade, from 2014 until 2024, when he sold his family home.

“The street has changed a lot since we bought here,” he says, when we connect as planned in late November. “But Berlin is always like that.” As if to prove his point, some scaffolding is blocking the sidewalk, forcing us to cross the street. “When we moved here,” he continues, “I’d leave for a few months and entire new buildings would have gone up on our street in that time.”

He and his wife, solo cellist Alisa Weilerstein, chose to live in Berlin, he says, “because it’s what New York was in the 1950s, or Paris at the turn of the century: Art-wise, everything is happening here. It has nine orchestras; three different opera houses; so many museums. It’s crazy. If you want to be in the middle of frantic energy, you can be – but you can also just step to the side and avoid it.” To illustrate, he walks us through a park with fish sculptures and water sprinklers where his two young daughters used to love to play. He then directs my gaze to a circular S-Bahn sign above Nordbahnhof station. “At night, that lit-up sign glowed through our apartment window like the moon,” he recalls.

Payare’s memory reminds me that the first song I learned how to play as a young guitarist was itself inspired by the S-Bahn: Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.” And the last time I was on tour was in my early twenties, as a Stooges-worshipping punk rocker. Things have changed in the intervening years, and not only the fact that I’ve come to appreciate Chopin. As further proof that I have, somehow, grown up, I’m now eating actual protein  – whether it’s smoked halibut at Rogacki or roast goose at Jäger & Lustig.

My best meal in Berlin, however, is at Zur Letzten Instanz, a venerable eatery that somehow balances being young and being the oldest joint in town. Opened in 1621, it has hosted everyone from Beethoven to Napoleon. Despite its wizened, candlelit creakiness, there’s no kitschy-cliché lederhosen or trad-mädchen dirndls on view; instead, hip waiters with angular haircuts pour cutting-edge natural rieslings by the glass from svelte magnums. The kitchen offers thoughtful, deceptively simple takes on Germanic stalwarts like grillhaxe (grilled pork knuckle) or mountain cheese dumplings. Savouring the myrrh-flavoured red cabbage, I realize this is that rarest of things, that which travellers invariably seek but struggle to find, no matter how well-advised: a genuine place.

Just as authentically excellent is the OSM’s performance that evening at the venerable Philharmonie Berlin, considered among the best orchestral auditoriums in the world. Payare is in fine form, mincing imperiously around the podium, hunching and hopping, gesticulating with his wand like a warlock possessed, reaching up on tippy-toes to commune with percussionists in the rear, practically levitating into midair as his curly high-rise flow bops in time to Berlioz’ wild Symphonie fantastique.

The following morning, a group of wind and brass players gathers for a jog in the Tiergarten. Touring is high-pressure, and staying active helps orchestra members be performance-ready. “The cadence and rhythm of the days is very intense, so we have to be careful about our well-being,” says the OSM’s director of musical personnel, Françoise Henri. As everyone will keep reminding me during this week, being on tour isn’t a holiday – it’s a strenuous undertaking. “Discipline is the constant in this whole thing; without it there is no way,” Payare emphasizes. “It’s kind of like hyper-focused time management. Each musician also has to make time to warm up for the concert each day.”

There are 106 musicians on this adventure. Some are greenhorns living their first-ever group outing; others are backups, in case someone falls ill. There’s even an understudy for Payare, though he’s never needed one. Alongside the executive-management team, there’s also a squad handling transportation logistics and roadies loading instruments.

At the airport the next morning, approaching the gate for our charter flight to Holland, I spy a brass-master practising his carry-on trumpet with a mute. (Imagine a kind of miniature top hat.) Another bandmate is teaching his young child how to play chess. She then starts flying paper planes made from pieces of musical-notation scores. It’s so poetic, so dreamily perfect, such a childlike vision – all these musicians flying around, all these musical notes drifting through the air.

At our hotel that afternoon, I exit my room into the carpeted hallway when something unexpected catches my attention: the muffled timbres of an oboe coming from a nearby room. It snaps me into the present moment – this is the reality of touring with an orchestra. Music is always at hand. Then, as I pad elatedly toward the elevator, more sounds emanate from behind another door: bassoon, I reckon.

Amsterdam is considered the world’s best classical-music city, and I can see why: Listening to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 accentuates a hike through the Vondelpark even more than their coffee shops’ White Chocolate hashish does. “They’ve always championed Mahler in Amsterdam,” Payare beams, when I ask him to recommend a composer that represents the city.

I then stop in for a late lunch at the bustling Café Americain, a central spot on Leidseplein that is also the oldest, most stylish café in town. Their menu features a lighter-than-air fish terrine followed by a supremely fresh main course of beet-marinated trout – the sort of healthsome concoctions so fine they deserve to become new classics.

There’s just enough time before the show to catch the Dutch Old Masters at the Rijksmuseum. Vermeer and Rembrandt have an uncanny way of changing the way we view the world. Afterward, as I walk along the canals, everything begins to resemble paintings: streetlights reflected in shimmering water, the Flemish-gabled facades, tulips in a window.

The Royal Concertgebouw is known for its superlative sound quality. PR manager Jacob van der Vlugt tells me this is said to be due, in part, to the venue’s “acoustic dust,” which purportedly adds layers of resonant depth. Once, long ago, he explains, the upper walls and ceilings of the hall were cleaned – causing a noticeable depreciation in the acoustics. Since then, beneficial dust has been allowed to settle and collect without further perturbation.

As I settle into my seat on the balcony, a full spectrum of instruments can be heard warming up on stage. The musicians are tuning, running scales and rehearsing tricky passages. Carousels of notes tumble forth: flute merry-go-rounds, French-horn blasts, harp trills, timpani rolls. The OSM is also showcasing its new set of bells tonight, made in the Netherlands and together weighing over 400 kilograms. (They bring them on flights as checked baggage.) In the wake of their majestic Berlin performance, the orchestra seems to have unlocked even deeper layers of interconnectivity tonight. Certain passages from Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 seem to meld and recombine in ways that astonish even the orchestra itself.

When I ask Payare to describe such moments, he begins by speaking about their ephemerality. Putting the transcendent beauty of pure musical chemistry into words isn’t easy. He moves his hands gently around his jaw and the sides of his face, almost as though the precious feeling he’s attempting to articulate might be something he could eat, a tangible substance, something that can enter and move through a person. I know what he’s getting at – in a limited sense. For I’ve also lived the collaborative magic of musical connection, though not since I was younger, and only with a few other players at a time. It’s a wondrous sensation, and it’s the feeling Payare lives for. On this night, he and his orchestra have managed to share it with the entire audience, which rewards them with rapturous standing ovations.

A quick two-hour flight drops me into Vienna and its altogether different imperial vibe. The architecture here is on a much grander scale, with a Mitteleuropean baroque wedding cake aesthetic. “Everything in Vienna looks like a postcard,” Payare comments. “Walking around, it’s almost like you breathe music.”

We are now on Mozart’s native soil, and his bewigged mug still can be spotted on everything from shopfront signage to foil-wrapped chocolates. Speaking of dessert: This is also the spiritual homeland of sweets, with its multitudes of layered gâteaux, strudels and buchteln. It’s not possible to visit every temple of viennoiserie during my 43 hours here, but I’m determined to sample the Sachertorte at both of the holy sites that lay claim to originating it: Hotel Sacher and Demel. Unfortunately, everyone else in town seems to have the same game plan – the lineups at each shrine snake distressingly around the block. But listening to Mozart’s urgent, febrile Symphony No. 41 tends to enhance one’s determination to make cake dreams come true.

Adopting a bold approach, I march into the Hotel Sacher’s main entrance (rather than the clogged Café Bel Étage entrance) as though I’m staying in their grandest suite, hoping to perhaps approach their inner sanctum via the lobby. Amazingly, it works. I’m whisked to a table in the nearly empty yet exquisitely opulent and gold-panelled Blaue Bar. An individual-size cube version of their eponymous torte promptly arrives with a blossom of unsweetened whipped cream as airy as Amadeus’ wig. What can one say? Its three different proprietary chocolates blended with apricot jam and sponge cake are iconic for a reason.

The hack for Demel, I decide, is to get there 10 minutes before it opens. When I arrive at 9:50 a.m., however, the queue is already halfway down the street. Fortunately, I get in easily: The cashier informs me that the first 150 people or so get seated, and I’m only number 120. The Sachertorte at Demel, I’m pleased to report, is exactly as good as its rival. The oomph really is in the dark glazed frosting. But the best thing here is something I’ve never heard of: a fragilité. It’s an upsettingly delectable buttercream-praline-meringue confection, and despite its immediate blimping effect, it pairs sinfully with a kaffee mit einspänner (a double espresso naughtied up with excessive whipped cream).

Vienna’s Wiener Konzerthaus is packed for the OSM’s sold-out finale. Payare considers it “the model for the best concert halls in the world. Such mystique. All the great composers in the past wanted to go there to make a name for themselves. It is everything.” So is their performance that evening, concluding with a stirring rendition of Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony.

After the concert, I join the troupe for their post-tour celebration at the first-floor Mozart Buffet. The mood is jubilant. Drinks flow. Platters of open-faced sandwiches disappear as quickly as they arrive. One violinist confesses that after so much travel, he isn’t quite sure how to process the tour’s end. “I’m super happy right now,” offers Catherine Turner, principal horn. “But also a little sad because it’s over.” It’s obvious that they’re all justifiably proud of what they’ve accomplished. Several of them can be heard discussing how it’s the best tour they’ve ever done. Payare stands on a chair and makes a toast about how well the voyage went. Everyone cheers and clinks glasses. As I contentedly fill the last page of my notebook, I make a quiet promise to myself: to see as many OSM concerts as I can – whether at Montreal’s Place des Arts or anywhere else in the world.