After six years of study in Vienna, where he acquired German discipline and experienced the grandiose cultural summit of the late romantic era, Enescu moved to Paris, where he continued his studies for another five years at the Conservatoire de Paris.

His contact with the modernity of the French musical world gave him certainty, clarity of thought, measure, elegance in expression and sound color for refined detail, which he learned to blend with what he had learned in Vienna, together with a stream of freshness and optimism, love of life and people, which he had brought with him from his childhood home in Moldavia.

The end of his musical apprenticeship was marked by the composition of his Second Violin Sonata in Paris in 1899[1] The first performance of the sonata was given in Paris by Jacques Thibaud, violin, with the composer himself at the piano, on 22 February 1900, in a concert that was part of the Concerts Colonne series[2] The score is dedicated to Joseph and Jacques Thibaud.

[3] Enescu later acknowledged that this sonata, together with his next work, the Octet for Strings, marked the point where "I felt myself evolving rapidly, I was becoming myself .

Perhaps as compensation for the lack of tonal contrast between the first two movements, the refrain theme begins in D minor, modulating to settle in C major.