#Classicsaday #Classical1924 Week 2

 It's become an annual tradition. For the first month of the new year, the Classics a Day team looks back a century. So the challenge for January 2024 is to post performances of classical works that were either composed, premiered, or first recorded in 1924.

It turns out 1924 was a landmark year for classical music. Here are my posts for the second week of #Classical1924.

01/08/24 Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231

Honegger had completed this work in 1923. It was premiered at a Paris concert conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It shared the program with Prokofiev's reconstructed Piano Concerto No. 2

01/09/24 Leoš Janáček: String Quartet No. 1

This quartet was written within a space of 15 days in October, 1923. It was inspired by the Tolstoy's novel "The Kreutzer Sonata," which is the subtitle for this work. The Czech Quartet premired the quartet at a Contemporary Music Society concert in Prague in 1924.

01/10/24 Gustav Holst: Choral Symphony

Holst completed this work in 1924. It was premiered in October 1925. Although sometimes known as the First Choral Symphony, Holst never got beyond writing some sketches for a planned second.

01/14/24 Bohuslav Martinu: Concertino for Cello, Winds, Percussion and Piano in C minor, H 143

This concertino was one of seven major works Martinu composed in Paris in 1924.

01/12/24 Maurice Ravel: Tzigane, Rapsodie de concert

The original version for violin and piano premiered April 26, 1924 with violinist Jelly d'Aranyi, who commissioned the piece. The orchestral version premiered October 19, 1924 with the Conertgebouw Orchestra and violinist Samuel Dushkin.