Violin Sonata No. 1 in A major, Op. 13, Op. 13

Fauré's First Violin Sonata (1876) is his earliest masterpiece and one of the most ravishing violin sonatas of the 19th century, remarkable for the fact that it was composed by a 30-year-old who had barely written any chamber music. The first movement's exuberant main theme established Fauré's voice — long-arching, modally inflected, harmonically subtle — with an immediacy that astonished Saint-Saëns and the Paris musical establishment. The central Andante is a nocturne of such perfectly sustained tenderness that it stands as one of the finest slow movements in the French chamber repertoire, and the finale's rhythmic energy brings the work to a sparkling conclusion.