This Week in Classical Music: November 9, 2026.  Travel II.  Catania and Rome are on the agenda this week.  Rome, with the papal court, the music-loving cardinals, the academies, is probably one of the most important cities in the world, whether we’re talking music or anything else.  While nothing compares to Rome, Catania has something to boast about: it’s the birthplace of Vincenzo Bellini, and like many cities in Italy, it also has a beautiful opera house.  Also, it has an important conservatory.  We’ll write about all this and more later. 

Above is the symbol of Catania.

This Week in Classical Music: November 2, 2026.  Travel II.  The Baroque cities of Ragusa, Modica, and Noto were never big on music – architecture was the focus – but Palermo, which Classical Connect visited earlier, was.  It had an active musical scene during the Renaissance, its opera house is the largest in Italy, and it has a symphony orchestra, which is considered one of the best in Italy.  We’ll cover all of it later. 

The image above is the symbol of Palermo.

This Week in Classical Music: October 26, 2026.  Travel I.  Classical Connect is on the way to Naples, the “real” Naples in Italy – not that there’s anything wrong with Naples, Florida, which has its own Philharmonic Orchestra and interesting chamber music series.  But Naples, Italy, has a history stretching back more than 3,000 years and, what’s important to us, a glorious history of classical music.  That’s what we’ll write about when we come back. 

The red horn (cornicello) is a symbol of Naples.

This Week in Classical Music: October 19, 2026.  Liszt and the 20^th century.  This is a very full week for a small entry.  Two of the very popular composers have their anniversaries, and then there are several more, talented and interesting.  The popular ones are Liszt and Bizet.  Franz Liszt was born on October 22^nd of 1811, in the village of Doborján, in the Kingdom of Hungary (it’s now in Austria, called Raiding).  His family was German-speaking; he never learned Hungarian.  Later in his life, when he visited Pest, he proclaimed himself Hungarian, but his music was firmly based in the German tradition, despite all the Hungarian Rhapsodies.  A child prodigy, he studied with Carl Czerny and made his public debut at the age of 11 in Vienna.  In 1823, he moved to Paris.  By then, he was already earning good money from his public performances.  He settled in Paris, concertizing widely, and became part of the elite society of writers and poets, which included Victor Hugo, George Sand, her lover Frédéric Chopin, Alfred de Vigny, Berlioz, Eugène Delacroix, and others.  He also met and befriended Paganini – all that before he turned 23.  We’re not going into the details of his long, eventful, and very interesting life (we did write about Liszt on many occasions, including the old entry we published on his 200^th birthday, here).  Our library has a large selection of his works; it’s worth browsing.

The second popular composer is George Bizet, though he didn’t live long enough to accept his fame: when he died in 1875, at the age of 36, he thought his opera, Carmen, was a failure.  And he was right to an extent: the critical and public reaction to the premiere, at the Opéra-Comique three months earlier, was lukewarm at best, and so was the initial run.  It was not till the staging of Carmen in Vienna later that year that it achieved recognition: despite deviation from the original French production, it was a success.  From there on, opera’s (and its creator’s) fame only grew, conquering one capital after another, so much so that today, by some accounts, it’s the most often performed opera in the world! 

Charles Ives, Ned Rorem, and Lucian Berio were also born this week, on October 20, 1874, October 23, 1923, and October 24, 1925, respectively.  Ives is one of the most important American composers; Berio – one of the most important composers of the European avant-garde, and Ned Rorem wrote many wonderful songs and a scandalous memoir of his life in Paris.

This Week in Classical Music: October 12, 2026.  Pavarotti and Zemlinsky.  Today is Luciano Pavarotti’s birthday: he was born in Modena in 1935.  His was probably the most recognizable (and beautiful) voice since the era of Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli (some would say since Beniamino Gigli).

Alexander von Zemlinsky was born on October 14^th of 1871 in Vienna.  He was born ¼ Jewish, but his whole family converted to Judaism, and he was raised Jewish (the aristocratic “von” in his name was his own invention).  He fell in love with Alma Schindler, whom we know as Alma Mahler; that didn’t work out, but Zemlinsky eventually became a good friend of Gustav’s.  He was a prominent teacher: among his students were Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and many others.  He was also a respected conductor (among his assistants were Erich Kleiber, Webern, and George Szell).  But we know him as a composer, even if his talent was acknowledged very late. 

Zemlinsky started composing early, and by 1893 his music was publicly performed.  In 1985, he was also conducting (in one of his orchestras, Schoenberg played the cello).  In 1907, Zemlinsky joined Mahler in the Vienna Hofoper, then moved to the German opera of Prague and eventually to Berlin, where he became a conductor at the Kroll Opera.  When the Nazis came to power, he fled to Vienna and, after the Anschluss in 1938, to the US via Prague.  In the US, he remained practically unknown, even while Schoenberg and many of his other colleagues were feted.  He suffered a stroke and died in Larchmont, NY, on March 15^th of 1942.  Here, from 1924, is Zemlinsky’s Third Quartet, performed by the La Salle Quartet.

Two Italians were also born this week, both on October 18^th: Luca Marenzio, in 1553, and Baldassare Galuppi, in 1706.  Marenzio lived during the era of the High Renaissance in music and was famous for his madrigals.  He deserves a separate entry, which we hope to provide.  These days, Galuppi is known mostly for one of his sonatas (no. 5), as performed by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (here), but during his lifetime, he was famous for his operas, both comic and serious. Even Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, knew of Galuppi and invited him to come to St. Petersburg.  He spent three years there as court composer and conductor, before returning to Venice.  He died in 1785.

This Week in Classical Music: October 5, 2026.  Three pianists.  Several important composers and three pianists, one of whom is our favorite, were born this week.  We’ll get to the pianists in a minute, but first, the composers.  , considered the most important German composer before Bach (he worked during the early Baroque while Bach was at the tail end of the period, when many of his contemporaries were already moving toward the Classical idiom), was born in Köstritz, Thuringia, on October 8^th of 1585.  Here is Part I of his funeral music (the first one to use the text in German), Musikalische Exequien. It’s called “Concerto in the form of a German funeral mass.”

Giuseppe Verdi, one of the greatest opera composers ever (and many would say the greatest), was born on October 9^th (or 10^th) of 1813, in Roncole, near Parma.  We’ve written about Verdi so many times that all we can do now is illustrate his art with an excerpt from one of his operas.  Here, from Act I of La Traviata, starting with E strano!, аrе Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti.  They’re accompanied by the National Philharmonic Orchestra with Richard Bonynge, who just turned 98! 

Camille Saint-Saëns, loved by many, but not as much by us (even if we admit that he was a talented composer and apologize to his admirers), was born in Paris on October 9^th of 1835.  Here’s Saint-Saëns’s Piano Quintet, a piece that isn’t performed often.  It’s recorded by Christina Ortiz and the Fine Arts Quartet. 

And now to the pianists. Our favorite is Evgeny Kissin.  We like him not only because he's a wonderful musician and technically phenomenal; we also very much appreciate his political stance.  He’s adamantly opposed to Putin and an aggressive Russia and is very supportive of Ukraine, the victim of Putin’s aggression.  He also supports Israel in its fight against enemies, whether the homicidal ones, like Hamas, or just the regular antisemites.   

Kissin was born in Moscow on October 10^th of 1971, so he’s about to turn 55.  His first and only teacher, both at the Gnessin School or later at the Gnessin Institute, was Anna Kantor.  Ms Kantor died in June of 2021 at the age of 98; she was living in Prague, where Kissin had been residing since 2016.  Kissin made his orchestral debut, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20, at the age of 10.  One year later, he gave his first piano recital.  In 1984, he played both of Chopin’s piano concertos at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory; the concert was a revelation.  In 1985 and thereafter, he was allowed to perform abroad; in 1988, he (famously) played Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.  Kissin left Russia in 1991, the year the Soviet Union ceased to exist.  Kissin has a tremendously successful career, performing all over the world.  We may not always agree with his interpretations, but there’s absolutely no doubt that he’s one of the greatest pianists of his generation.  Here’s Evgeny Kissin playing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 3. 

The Russian (Jewish) – American pianist Shura Cherkassky was born on October 7^th of 1909, in Odesa (then Odessa).  He was widely considered to be the latest pianist in the great Romantic tradition of the 19^th century.  Here’s Cherkassky playing Chopin’s Nocturne op. 27, no. 2 in D-flat major, with a wonderful freedom in dynamics and tempo (we find his rubatos, something we’re usually concerned about, quite stylish). 

And finally, the Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer, one of the great interpreters of the music of Bach, was born on October 6^th of 1886, in Basel.