Guillaume Lekeu died of typhoid fever in 1894 the day after his 24th birthday. He was one of a line of distinguished Franco-Belgian composers that includes César Franck, Eugène Ysaÿe, Henri Vieuxtemps and Albéric Magnard. Given his early death, he left a surprisingly rich quantity of chamber music, the best known of which is his sonata for violin and piano composed in 1892-3, the year before his death. The sonata is a work for which I have always had a soft spot, starting with a recording by Menuhin and his sister recorded in 1938. Despite the sonata's quality, it features rarely on concert programmes or recordings by prominent violinists. Even the excellent recording by Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien titles the CD “Ravel Complete Music for Violin and Piano” plus the Lekeu Sonata.
The sonata is a substantial work, playing for around 34 minutes with three movements of around 10 minutes each. Much of the work is suffused with a gentle fin de siècle melancholy, like much of Lekeu's music. Almost as if he had a premonition of his early death. The second movement, in particular, is one of the most beautiful in all violin and piano sonata movements. I listened to the work today in the recording by Ibragimova, one of my favourites amongst modern violinists and equally at home in Bach, Shostakovich ... or Lekeu. She did not disappoint here; Russian by birth she may be, but she entered the world of the Lekeu sonata with an entirely convincing sound and impeccable style.
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