Marjorie Hayward (violin)
G. O'Connor-Morris (pianoforte)
John Ireland's first Violin Sonata in D minor has never enjoyed anything approaching the popularity of its successor in A minor, but, though admittedly a much less mature and individual work than the A minor, it is by no means as inferior to it as one might conclude.
The D minor Sonata was written during 1908-9 for the third of W. W. Cobbett 's famous chamber music competitions, and carried off the first prize from 134 entries. It was published in 1911, but re-issued in a new and more concise form in 1917 (the date of the A minor). Critics have detected the influence of Vaughan Williams in the slow movement and of Grieg in the opening of the finale, but the work as a whole could have been written by no one but Ireland.