This Sonata, composed in the Spring of 2008, was, in the composer’s own words, “the result of three separate strands coming together.  Having written a Cello Sonata a few years previously, the idea of writing a Violin Sonata took root in the back of my mind and I chanced upon a mysterious four-chord sequence which didn’t seem to go anywhere.  Then, when I saw my father shortly before he died in a hospice in 2006, a fluttering, heart-beat rhythm on one note came into my mind.  That same year, I met Rupert Marshall-Luck and worked with him in a performance of Elgar’s Violin Sonata.  When I mentioned to Rupert that I was thinking of composing a Violin Sonata of my own, his enthusiasm for the project and desire to play the work provided me with the necessary impetus to commence work in earnest.”

A work of emotional depth and directness, full of contrasts of colour and underpinned by formal tautness, the Sonata is here published for the first time. Prepared under the direct supervision of the composer, the score includes a Preface written by Matthews in which the work’s genesis is explained and its motifs and structure explored; whilst the separate violin part incorporates suggestions for bowings and fingerings by Rupert Marshall-Luck, the Sonata’s dedicaté.