Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) wrote his violin sonata in 1914, he did, however, revise it several times before its first performance in 1921. The composer, a dedicated Czech nationalist and pan slavist, remembers "...in the 1914 Sonata for violin and piano I could just about hear sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head..." the people of Moravia were waiting to be liberated by the Russians at the beginning of the First World War and the work is full of suspense and atmosphere. The first performance was given by violinist František Kudláček and pianist Jaroslav Kvapil on 24 April 1922 at a concert of new Moravian music organized by the Young Composer's Club in Brno. Interesting to note that the first performance abroad was in Frankfurt in 1923, the violinist was the composer Paul Hindemith.

Here the performers are Jana Vlachova violin and Frantisek Maly piano

The work is in four relatively short and very tightly structured movements:

IV. Adagio

The plaintive opening piano theme is interrupted by a 'shudder' passages marked "ferocious" in the violin which works as a motto through the whole last movement and belongs exclusively to the violin. The violin introduces a new cantabile theme marked poco mosso which is then taken up by the piano takes on another violin ostinato passage, but this is all cut short by a complete repetition of the opening section. In the development section which follows the piano attempts to progress with the opening melody while the 'shudder' continuously interrupts until the violin is let take over this melody and lead it right up through its range and connect with a edgy broken repetition of the second theme over nervous tremolos on the piano. A very condensed recap brings the work to a conclusion dominated by the 'shudder' theme.