Sonata in A minor for solo violin Op.27 No.2 (Obsession)

Although he was famed in his time as a violinist rather than a composer, Ysaÿe bears the distinction of having written the most successful series of works for unaccompanied violin since Bach’s sonatas and partitas. How long he had been thinking about it we don’t know but, observing Bach’s example without being intimidated by it, Ysaÿe sketched all six sonatas in just one day at his summer villa at Le Zoute on the Belgian Coast in 1923. They were ready for publication a few days later and they duly appeared in 1924 as Six Sonates pour violin seul, Op.27, each one dedicated to an admired violinist colleague.

It is not quite clear from the score of the Sonata in A minor whether the Obsession title applies to just the first movement or the whole work. As a great friend of its dedicatee, Jacques Thibaud, Ysaÿe would have been aware of his obsession with the Prelude of Bach’s Partita in E major, which he habitually used as a warm-up exercise and which plays a prominent part in the Prélude of this work. It does it, however, in association with allusions to the Dies Irae and after that it is the old plain song that becomes the obsession. It is featured at the end of the otherwise sweetly expressive Malinconia, reappears as the theme (plucked at the beginning and bowed at the end) of the five variations headed Danse des ombres (Dance of the Shades), and it has a haunting presence in the spectacularly dramatic Les Furies.