Violin Sonata in D major Op.9 No.3 (before 1743)

Of the two most remarkable facts in the life of the violinist-composer Jean-Marie Leclair – that he was a dancer and ballet master in the early part of his career and that he died at the hand of a murderer as he entered his house in Paris – the former is the more significant. The dance movements in Leclair’s sonatas are so much more physical, so much more zestful, than those of his contemporaries. The Sonata in D from the set of twelve he published when he returned from the comparative safety of the Netherlands to Paris in 1743 begins, like most of his works of this kind, with a slow movement, a melodious Andante with violin colouring attractively varied by conversational changes of register. The following Allegro adopts a characteristically spirited dance rhythm to celebrate the textural interest of double-stopped sonoroties. If the Sarabande is more an elegantly expressive Largo than a dance movement, the Tambourin is an entertaining fiddle tune with a drone accompaniment, an infectiously lively rhythmic step and engagingly frank rustic bravura requiring much technical skill on the part of the violinist – but surely not so much as to inspire murderous intent in the composer’s vioinist nephew, the (inconvicted) prime suspect in his untimely death.