Just two years separate Grieg's first violin sonata from his second, the Sonata for violin and piano No. 2 in G major, Op. 13 (1867). But these were eventful years for the young composer, during which he married, fully took up the cause of Norwegian nationalist music, and began to make his name known around Europe. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that for all the apparent similarities between these two sonatas, they are really very unlike one another. It is not so much that Grieg's interest in identifiably Norwegian music is apparent in the Sonata No. 2, as that the influence of Robert Schumann—evident throughout the Sonata No. 1—is so much less evident, a change which allows Grieg's own unique and colorful character to shine through with greater power. It perhaps also means that the structure of the piece becomes somewhat less concise and coherent; Grieg, by his own admission, struggled greatly with chamber music and its forms.

Like its sister piece of 1865, the Sonata for violin and piano No. 2 in G major, Op. 13 is in three movements, of which the first is the longest. It opens with a Lento doloroso introduction in the minor mode, in which the main theme of the upcoming, major-mode Allegro vivace body of the movement is tentatively voiced by the violin in a kind of quasi-cadenza. The second movement is an elegant and delicate Allegretto tranquillo, in which the piano from time to time imitates the strummed chords of a guitar or lute. Grieg crafts something of a light, peasant dance for the Allegro animato finale.

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