Brahms completed his Violin Sonata in d minor op. 108 in 1888. It was the culmination of several years of work, and his final contribution to the genre. This Third Sonata is his only one in a minor key, and stands in stark contrast to its two predecessors, the cheerful and lyrical Sonatas in G major and A major. Cast on a large scale, its four movements are full of tense drama, technically and musically demanding in equal measure and crowned by a brilliant finale that Brahms’s contemporaries adm...