Ysaÿe’s Solo Violin Sonatas explore the instrument’s capabilities in an entirely original way. The score of the Sonatas has meticulous indications for bowing and fingering, making it clear how every bar was conceived with the violin to hand. With such precision, it’s surprising what different approaches we can hear on record.

Karl Stobbe stays close to the text, giving strongly projected performances that are full of spirit and energy. He approaches the high virtuosity of the Sixth Sonata in an exciting, fearless manner; it’s an account with enormous momentum. Similarly, he creates a powerful sense of narrative in the Third Sonata, subtitled ‘Ballade’. There are one or two less attractive features of the set: the recording is close, and at quite a high level, contributing to a lack of really quiet playing. The opening of the Fifth Sonata, depicting dawn breaking, lacks the magic memorably captured by Leonidas Kavakos. And the parenthetic Bach quotations in the Second Sonata’s first movement, marked piano, aren’t sufficiently contrasted with the rest of the music. Another problem concerns Stobbe’s chord-playing: most loud spread chords are attacked quite fiercely, creating an aggressive effect (I was taught, by a pupil of one of these Sonatas’ dedicatees, to reserve the loudest sound for the moment when the bow crosses to the higher notes). By and large, however, Stobbe has the measure of this music, plus all the necessary enthusiasm and technique to present it convincingly.