Eugène Ysaÿe’s six sonatas have helped shape English violinist Jack Liebeck’s career since the early days. He included the “Ballade” No 3 on his 2002 debut recording but only felt ready to take on the set – which he describes as “Wagnerian swagger” juxtaposed with Debussy-like delicacy – with the enforced isolation of recent times.

“Now seemed the perfect moment to climb this violinistic mountain, a set of works amongst the most virtuosic in the entire repertoire,” he said. And what an impeccable job he has done. His 1785 Guadagnini is given a severe workout in these pieces which the Belgian virtuoso sketched out in a feverish 24 hours in 1923.

Of course, the technical challenges are immense, and Liebeck meets and surmounts them with precision and seeming ease, but more than that he feels a strong kinship with the music itself, encompassing as it does the European violin tradition from Bach to Bartók.

As diabetes took its toll Ysaÿe turned more to composing and Liebeck gives us a keen insight into the range of his expression with these works composed for friends and fellow...