“Good news! Monsieur Ysaÿe has escaped the German armies and is on a boat for England. Unfortunately, it is said he is bringing all his music with him”. So goes a well-known Eugène Ysaÿe story from the first world war. I know of none of the six violinists to whom he dedicated his six solo sonatas who recorded them (but the mid- 1920s was not a good time for adventurous recording projects). When asked by someone in later life whether he played the third sonata, dedicated to him, George Enescu is reputed to have replied: “I hate that music”. So much for contemporary opinion. Fortunately for us, the six sonatas have gradually and increasingly established themselves in the repertoire of violinists, and lovers of violin playing – I have twelve recordings of the complete six, the latest from Thomas Zehetmair. I have to admit that even 80+ years on, the sonatas can at times be pretty challenging to listen to; hardly the kind of thing your local supermarket is going to pipe through the shop to entertain happy shoppers.

Germany and Austria have produced an admirable crop of violinists over the past couple of decades, including Christian Tetzlaff, Frank Peter Zimmerman, Benjamin Schmid, Katrin Scholz, Arabella Steinbacher and Laurent Breuninger. I am a relatively recent convert to Thomas Zehetmair, but I greatly enjoyed his traversal of the six sonatas. His technique is fully up to it, and his playing is intelligent and varied with no showing-off. A word of praise also to the recording (by Manfred Eicher); solo violins are not that easy to record, and far too many producers make the mistake of miking too close to make up for the violin’s perceived limited dynamic range. Herr Eicher gets it just right, with enough air and space around the sound to make listening a pleasure. This new candidate goes up to the top few of my eleven other recordings.