Heitor Villa-Lobos’s three violin sonatas date from a key period in his career: the moment at which he matured as a composer, established his personal idiom and achieved his first professional triumphs. Each sonata shares some influence from French late Romanticism or Impressionism, as well as revealing Villa-Lobos’s skill as a string player. The First Violin Sonata’s subtitle of Désespérance (‘Despair’) suits its melancholy lyricism, while the ‘infinite abundance of musical ideas’ in the Second Violin Sonata is characterised by a wide range of emotions. The sophisticated Third Violin Sonata is steeped in the influence of Debussy, but also anticipates Villa-Lobos’s new directions in the 1920s.