European Capitals of Culture 2025
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Each summer we are happy to seize the opportunity offered by the European Capitals of Culture to call attention to a few special musical events or the characteristic musical culture of the regions in question.
In 2025 the cultural world is focusing on Chemnitz in Germany and the city of Gorizia, which was divided after World War II into a Gorizia proper belonging to Italy and a smaller Eastern part called Nova Gorica, which formed part of Yugoslavia. In the meantime, Nova Gorica belongs to Slovenia, whereby the significance of the political border has also diminished significantly.
Let us start with Chemnitz. Among the many cultural events, we would like to single out a March concert that featured music by Chemnitz composers. In addition to the contemporary “5 Miniatures for Baritone and String Orchestra” by Thomas Stöß (*1969), the program also included the Partita in E flat by Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-1798), who was born and brought up in Chemnitz. During his later Bonn years, Neefe was Beethoven’s teacher (from 1782), and he has long been regarded as a leading composer of Singspiele. The RISM database contains 380 entries for Neefe’s compositions (RISM Catalog | RISM Online). As regards musical sources from local collections, we currently have four library sigla for Chemnitz, but with a total of only 7 source descriptions (although one among them happens to be a printed edition featuring no fewer than 260 pieces). This is to say that a start has already been made, but there is still a lot of ground for RISM to cover in the future.
The cultural capitals Gorizia and Nova Gorica present themselves on a joint website. The musical program is extensive and tends to cover a wide range of genres. Three names should not be left unmentioned here. In July the young Italian singer-songwriter Alfa will make an appearance. The still young punk rock singer Patti Smith gave a kind of run-up concert already in 2023 at the former border crossing Rožna Dolina. And on 21 June, a musical and poetic project with the ensemble Violoncelli Itineranti will be presented in Aquileia under the title “Untamed Words” (Parole Indomite).
Overall, we have ten music collections with RISM sigla from Gorizia. From these, however, only 17 music manuscripts have been described in RISM, all coming from I-GOl. Nova Gorica is represented in our database with but a single collection without source references: SI-NGf. This RISM siglum stands for the Škrabec library of the Franciscan monastery Kostanjevica, which the exiled French King Charles X (1757-1836) had chosen as his burial place. In reference to his reign (1824-1830), a concert will be held on June 18, featuring excerpts from Italian operas by composers who were active in Paris during and after this period: Ferdinando Paer, Luigi Cherubini, Gioachino Rossini, Gaspare Spontini, and Vincenzo Bellini.
Next year, Trenčín in Slovakia and Oulu in Finland will be the European Capitals of Culture. Inspired by this, a COOGIE (Chemnitz-Oulu-Osijek-Guitar-International-Exchange) Final Concert will take place in Chemnitz on 6 September. On this occasion, the guitar orchestra of the Chemnitz Municipal Music School and an ensemble from the Oulu Conservatory will give the world premiere of the guitar piece “Winds” by Janko Rašeta. We look forward to being able to report on the musical events in Oulu and Trenčín in more detail next year.
Image: Portrait of Christian Gottlob Neefe, Available online (public domain).
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