Miscellanea, October 2025
This Week in Classical Music: October 6, 2025. Miscellanea. Giuseppe Verdi was born on October 9th of 1813, in Le Roncole, a village between Piacenza and Parma, part of Italy that at the time belonged to Napoleon’s French Empire. Right this moment, it’s often known as Roncole Verdi. Giuseppe, as we effectively know, went on to turn out to be one of many best opera composers ever and Italy’s nationwide hero. We talked about Verdi’s music once we celebrated his 200th anniversary right here, so this week we’ll focus on one other necessary side of his life, his politics. Some episodes have been mythologized. For instance, the well-known refrain Va, Pensiero, from Nabucco, when written in 1842, was not supposed as a nationalistic hymn, however has turn out to be one since then: it was proposed because the nationwide anthem of Italy a number of instances and has been adopted because the official music by one of many Italian events. Nonetheless, from the late 1840s on, Verdi was very energetic within the Risorgimento (actually, resurgence, the unification motion). He was pals with Giuseppe Mazzini, one of many key figures within the unification motion, and even wrote a patriotic hymn on Mazzini’s request. His 1848 opera La battaglia di Legnano, with its opening refrain, Viva Italia, was greeted with huge enthusiasm. Even the favored slogan Viva Verdi was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D‘Italia, Vittorio Emanuele being the King of Piedmont-Sardinia and future king of the unified Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II. In 1859, Verdi brazenly entered politics, getting elected to a provincial council. He then headed a gaggle that met with the king in Turin and later with Depend Cavour, then the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia and one of many key individuals of the Risorgimento. It was Cavour who persuaded Verdi to proceed on as a politician and turn out to be a member of the Piedmont-Sardinia Parliament, although Verdi resigned quickly after Cavour’s demise in 1861, lower than three months after Vittorio Emanuele II declared the Kingdom of Italy (and made Cavour the Prime Minister of the unified nation). Right here’s Va Pensiero with James Levine conducting the Metropolitan Opera orchestra and refrain.
Heinrich Schütz, the best German composer earlier than Bach, was born on October 8th of 1585. He studied in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli and introduced Italian music again to Germany, which, in fact, doesn’t diminish his originality and expertise. We’ve got an in depth entry on Heinrich Schütz right here.
Camille Saint-Saëns was additionally born this week, on October 9th of 1835, in Paris. Not one in every of our favorites, he deserves a separate entry, which we promise to put in writing. We’re even much less in love with Ralph Vaughan Williams, very talked-about in England. Williams was born on October 12th of 1872.
Three pianists have been born this week: the Swiss Edwin Fischer, in Basel on October 6th of 1886, the fantastic Shura Cherkassky, an American pianist of Russian-Jewish descent, in Odessa, the Russian Empire, now Odesa, Ukraine, on October 7th of 1909. Cherkassky carried out until the tip of his life; he died on the age of 86. After which there’s one other Russian-Jewish pianist, Evgeny Kissin, who was born on October 10th of 1971. In 2024, for his help of Ukraine in its combat towards the Russian aggression, Kissin was declared a “overseas agent” by the insane and malignant Russian authorities. Kissin lives in Prague and is a British and Israeli citizen. Along with enjoying the piano, he writes poetry and music.
