Teacher, composer and conductor, the Swiss-born Ernest Bloch was in 1916 engaged to conduct a touring ballet company in the US. Though he returned briefly to his native country in the 1930s, he spent the rest of his life teaching and composing in North America. It was here that he established a reputation as a ‘Jewish’ composer, frequently using authentic Hebrew thematic material as the basis of his music, the Suite hébraïque being a particular example. This inspiration is also evident in both violin sonatas, deeply emotional works of a rhapsodic and free-flowing nature. Composed in the 1920s, they were soon taken into the violin repertoire.