Rubbra's First Violin Sonata is a notable achievement all round: its first two movements exhibit a bittersweet lyricism that will strike a chord with anyone who has ever responded to, say, John Ireland's glorious Second Violin Sonata or the chamber music of Howells. By contrast, the 'Fugal Rondo' finale intriguingly pursues an altogether more sturdy, determinedly neo-Classical mode of expression.
Written six years later in 1931, the Second Sonata already reveals a wider emotional scope, as well as a striking use of progressive tonality that at least one contemporary critic found 'disturbing and unnecessary'. Championed by the great Albert Sammons, it will come as a substantial discovery to many: comprising an eventful, everevolving first movement, a strong, but never sentimental 'Lament' centrepiece, and a quasi-Bartókian finale, its wild exuberance seems to look forward across the decades to the last movement of this same figure's Violin Concerto of 1959.
Framing that are the Four Pieces for beginners and the unaccompanied Variations on a PhrygianTheme, a work of compact resourcefulness. But even finer is the Third Sonata. It's a wondrous piece, its sense of purpose, rapt intuition and profound serenity irresistibly calling to mind Rubbra's Eighth Symphony, and it fully deserves the exalted advocacy it receives here. Indeed, Osostowicz and Dussek form an outstandingly sympathetic partnership.