The unaccompanied sonatas for strings (four each for viola and cello, three for violin and one for double bass) might be thought Weinberg’s greatest achievement – composing on this scale for a solo instrument leaving nowhere to hide in terms of technique and inspiration. It’s understandable that Gidon Kremer should have wanted to record those for violin, not least since they make for a convincing overview of the considerable changes in Weinberg’s idiom from the early 1960s.

The earlier two works were dedicated to Mikhail Fichtenholz. The First Sonata (1964) finds Weinberg’s conception of the solo sonata at its most uncompromising – notably with the terse opening Allegro and combative final Presto. In between are a darkly musing Andante, edgily humorous Allegretto and searching Lento, all unfolding with an inevitability and poise that underline the composer’s confidence in inhabiting a genre that has been dominated for all time by Bach.

Less unyielding in its formal and expressive abstraction, the Second Sonata (1967) unfolds as seven character studies that, between them, seem suggestive of a baroque dance suite most likely intended to entertain as much as to provoke. Even so, their incrementally increasing length goes hand in hand with gradually accumulating tension such that the finale’s headlong impetus and bristling syncopation leave the deadpan humour of the initial ‘Monody’ appreciably behind.

The Third Sonata (1979) was written for Victor Pikaizen and dedicated to the memory of the composer’s father. It unfolds as a continuous span that can be heard as several interrelated movements but (pace Kremer’s pertinent scenario) feels more akin to unfolding variations on motifs announced at the outset. What results is a heady succession of mood and textures that confirms Weinberg’s technical and creative resource when confronting apparent restrictions.

All three sonatas are now well represented on record. Those who already have Linus Roth’s tensile and vividly projected accounts (presented in chronological order along with ‘fantastic’ interludes courtesy of Shostakovich) or Yuri Kalnits’s more circumspect yet no less perceptive readings can rest content. Otherwise, this release – in sound of spaciousness and clarity, with booklet notes providing much food for thought – is a definite first choice for these outstanding pieces.