Jean-Marie Leclair was one of the most colorful musical figures of an era rich in them. Born in Lyon, France, to a musical and artistic family, he was first employed as a dancer with the opera in Lyon, where he married another member of the company. Widely traveled and employed throughout Western Europe, he became renowned as a violinist and composer. When his wife died, he married a skilled artisan, who engraved all of his published music after his Op. 1. They separated around 1758, and six years later Leclair was stabbed to death after entering his home late at night. The sensational crime was thoroughly investigated, with evidence clearly implicating a bitterly estranged nephew (also a violinist), but no one was ever charged.

Leclair composed a substantial body of chamber music and concertos for violin, as well as a number of ballets (all lost) and a single opera. As a composer, he was famous for his fusion of the French and Italian national styles, something readily apparent in his Op. 3, a set of six sonatas for two violins, without the customary anchor of a bass part or accompaniment. They were published in Paris in 1730.

The Fifth Sonata of the set opens with a sprightly, rhythmically varied movement, full of imitative interaction for the two violinists and with rich sonorities in its second half from double-stopping (playing on multiple strings simultaneously) in both parts. The central Gavotte is as graceful as advertised and the most “French” of the three movements, though Leclair uses Italian nomenclature for all of them. The finale is a high-speed, high-spirits chase reveling in the sheer joy of musical dexterity. —John Henken