Tight rhythms, melodies that range from passionate to sassy, thorough command of the violin as a composer and a player, and an endless capacity to surprise and delight the audience made this one of the first compositions by this young Polish composer to make an international impression.

Grazyna Bacewicz (1909 - 1969) was one of the few composers since Mozart who premiered her own violin sonatas as a violinist and piano sonatas as a pianist. In addition, she was a successful novelist and a writer of essays and observations. At the beginning of the twenty first century, there was an indication that her many fine compositions were beginning to win her a worldwide audience. There is every indication that Bacewicz wrote this sonata in the face of the crisis that faced all Polish composers in 1949: the newly solidified communist regime that now ruled the country then adopted the Soviet rules on "Socialist Optimism" that were supposed to guide composers as to what was proper music for the people. This might explain the unusual backward-looking nature of the music, whose last movements seem to reflect her relatively carefree days in Paris in the 1930s when she was a violin student of Carl Flesch and a composition student of Nadia Boulanger. The sonata is a four-movement work lasting 19 or 20 minutes. Bacewicz premiered it herself, with her brother Kiejstut accompanying. When Bacewicz won the Polish National Prize in 1952, this sonata was one of the fine works cited as a reason for its award. Naturally, the sonata is completely idiomatic, written by a complete master of the instrument. It ranges from dazzling display to pure, winning melody. At least two generations of violinists outside Poland have let the opportunity pass by to add a distinguished and crowd-pleasing work to their recital repertoires. The first movement is a fast one, though with a slow introduction. There is a folk-like flavor to the main melody, which is announced in the low register of the piano. Both it and the main section (Allegro) bring to mind the Hungarian Béla Bartók. The main theme of the movement mostly works with the opening "hook" of the memorable main theme, whose qualities are a remarkable blend of Bartók, Shostakovich, and Bacewicz herself. A recitative-like quality starts the second movement, which is musing and dark in mood, though it turns into a radiant D major at the end. The third movement is a lightly sprung scherzo that unexpectedly introduces a French boulevardier quality that would feel at home in something by Poulenc. The movement is also a virtuoso dazzler. Also starting with a brief slow introduction, the finale first states a theme in a mock-promenade style and fast and slow sections alternate in further brilliant fiddling.

© Joseph Stevenson, Rovi