Helmut Lachenmann wrote his Toccatina for the volume “Studien zum Spielen Neuer Musik für Violine” (EB 8356) edited by Igor Ozim and published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1986. No one could foresee back then that this “Etude for violin solo” would take on an active life of its own. The piece was first seen as a model of new string techniques, as David Alberman explained in his 1998 essay “Beyond the Conventional,” published in the journal “The Strad.”

But in the meantime, Lachenmann's “Toccati...