Sonata in G major for solo violin Op.27 No.5 (1923)

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.

Mathieu Crickboom, a pupil of Ysaÿe and second violinist in the Ysaÿe Quartet, must have been particularly adept in the Paganini speciality known as left-hand pizzicato. Certainly, the Sonata in G major which Ysaÿe dedicated to him makes a prominent feature of that particular technique, not least in the opening bars where the melodic line drawn by the bow is accompanied by notes plucked by the left hand. Titled L’Aurore, the first movement grows like a sunrise, developing its main theme from its quiet and slow-moving first entry to the brilliant series of arpeggios at the end. A country-dance version of that theme is introduced in robust multi-stopped harmonies at the beginning of the second movement, the more mellifluous middle section of which is connected to a varied reprise of the country dance by a virtuoso passage of left-hand pizzicato worthy of Paganini himself.