Ysaÿe’s Sonatas for solo violin were sketched out in a fevered twenty-four hours during the summer of 1923, a response to the question of why—in over two hundred years—no one had attempted to follow the path forged by Johann Sebastian Bach. Each of these six new Sonatas is dedicated to and customized around the playing style of a contemporary violinist, and as such they present formidable challenges. Russian virtuoso Alina Ibragimova, whose earlier recording of the Bach Sonatas was revelatory, turns out performances fully worthy of this distinguished ancestry.
