Violin Sonata No. 4

Of the five violin sonatas for violin and piano Grażyna Bacewicz composed between 1945 and 1951, the fourth (1949) is possibly the very finest. A work of irresistible sweep and expressive power, it was written in the early post-World War II era in communist-ruled Poland—a time and place in which the prevailing artistic mood was one of uncertainty. Bacewicz knew precisely what she wanted to say, and, as a virtuoso violinist in her own right, her Violin Sonata No. 4 gave her a commanding platform to say it. Contemporaries compared her Fourth Sonata to Brahms, and it shares the four-movement classical form of Brahms’ Violin Sonata No. 3. But the combination of spiky energy and passionate lyricism is all Bacewicz’s own. Its sweeping first movement, with its slow, tension-building introduction, leads to the sultry atmosphere and overcast skies of the thunder-haunted “Andante” second movement, followed by a spiky, playful “Scherzo”. The Finale, marked “Con passione”, is supercharged with ardour and intelligence.