Composed 1916-17; 24 minutes

As early as August 1903, Fauré confided to his wife that he had jotted down ideas for a second violin sonata. But he did not return to it until the summer of 1916, while on holiday in Évian, on the shores of Lake Geneva, during a break from his duties as Director of the Paris Conservatoire. There, he made rapid progress on the two outer movements. The slow movement took shape in wartime Paris that winter and into early 1917—a time of quiet resolve, with his son Philippe now serving at the Front. Fauré, facing growing deafness and change, explored new sound and structure from a place of inner clarity.

The first movement unfolds as a forward-driving sequence of three evolving themes within an idiosyncratic reworking of traditional sonata form. After the piano’s dark, rhythmic opening, the violin bursts in, reaching high and plunging low. A second theme winds upward over rippling piano arpeggios, restless and searching. A third, lyrical theme offers brief repose. As the music moves through its three sections and coda, Fauré subjects each idea to concentrated transformation. Themes shift, combine, and mirror each other, often with violin and piano in canon, driving toward a spirited, clear-eyed conclusion.

The slow Andante—one of Fauré’s most revered movements—spins a single, long-breathed melody: passionate yet restrained. It draws on material from his earlier D minor Symphony, premièred and then withdrawn decades earlier. The finale, marked con grazia, captures the distilled elegance of his late style. Its supple, gliding theme, the refrain of a sonata-rondo, shimmers over shifting harmonies. The music dances, but lightly and elusively, avoiding clear resolution. Fauré surprises by recalling the first movement’s dark opening motif deep in the piano, then transforms the consoling lyrical theme into a luminous, affirmative close.