Eugene Ysaye was, undeniably, one of musical history’s greatest violin virtuosos, with a technical mastery that astounded those who late in the 19th century and early in the 20th heard him. He was also a conductor and, more importantly, an esteemed teacher. Among his students was Josef Gingold, who would later make his mark as one of his era’s most distinguished violin pedagogues, this at IU’s Jacobs School.

Gingold, in turn, would claim among his students one Erin Aldridge, a teacher now herself at the University of Wisconsin-Superior as well as concertmaster of the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra. Aldridge returned to Bloomington for an Auer Hall concert Thursday evening that featured the Six Solo Sonatas of Ysaye, thereby claiming a link with the past and thereby, also, proving she certainly knows how to play the violin.

Ysaye as composer may not be as highly regarded as was Ysaye, the violinist, but in those six sonatas for unaccompanied violin, he wrote works that will probably forever taunt those who play the instrument. Like mountaineers who, when asked why they feel compelled to climb an Aconcagua or Everest, will tell you, "Because it’s there," so an aspiring violinist faced with the question will respond, "Because they’re there."

Still, not an awful lot of them will bother to take on these stunningly complex pieces. Some will fear failure. For others, it’s cognition that mastery is likely to produce more self-satisfaction than listener gratification. Heard singly, amidst other fare, the sonatas can excite a listener, because to watch what a musician has to do technically to bring these pieces to concert life becomes an invigorating part of the listening experience.

Heard in a batch, however, they do not wear so well. They’re top heavy in technical trickery. Beyond the double stops and pluckings, the imposing figurations and ever- present arpeggios, there’s not much for a listener to cling to. Seventy minutes of watching a violinist live dangerously tends toward the excessive.

Aldridge, however, deserves credit for her courage. She not only tamed these wild and demanding sonatas but also invested them with about as much musicality as could be drawn therefrom. One could hear, for instance, how Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas influenced Ysaye. He was inspired, in fact, to write his six pieces after he heard the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti play Bach’s set, and he dedicated the first of his own sonatas to Szigeti. Aldridge well succeeded in giving the music Bach’s propulsive force.

The remaining sonatas were dedicated to other up-and-coming violinists of the time: the French Jacques Thibaud, the Romanian George Enescu, the already then renowned Fritz Kreisler, Ysaye’s own student, MatthieuCrickboom, and the Spanish Manuel Quiroga. In each work, Ysaye explored a musical tradition, whether more Bach or the "Dies Irae " of the Requiem Mass or the music of Debussy or that of Kreisler or the flavors of Paganini. With Aldridge in firm control, one could detect the essences while ever gaining a sense of awe for what she was able methodologically to make her violin do. Hers was quite a feat. She deserves a bravo for the effort.