3. The _Largo con maesta_ is the outstanding movement of the sonata, remaining to this day one of MacDowell's most impressive creations. It is full of deep feeling and gravity, contrasted with passages of tender contemplation and the impassioned poetry of despair. The whole aspect of the movement is lofty in thought, vast in tonality and altogether indicative of power and of genius. MacDowell was harassed by drudgery and care when he wrote it and the tragic note is sounded from its first bars. After exhausting itself in intense expression, the opening theme makes way for a mood of quiet, although still despairing, contemplation. This wanders on, until the music becomes impassioned and more intricate. Rushing ascending scale passages add to the restless movement of the whole, culminating in a tumultuous and despairing utterance of the contemplative theme. This gradually dies down and soon the impressive strains of the first theme are heard, now softly breathed and portraying a deep and broken sadness in place of the clenched fist attitude of their first appearance. The music becomes more and more subdued, finally becoming extinct in _pppp_ chords. The whole of this last page is one of the most impressive and soul-stirring things in contemporary pianoforte music. 4. The final movement, _Allegro eroico_, opens with a bold, heroic theme in spread chords, followed by a quieter subject. The music goes triumphantly on with increasing brilliance, complexity and heroic ardour. At length a great final version of the heroic theme is heard, _Maestoso_, and soon we come to the dramatic moment of the whole sonata. At the very height of exaltation we are overwhelmed by a shattering descent of double octaves, _precipitate_. The heroism and self-confident ardour so carefully built up are swept away and the significant strains of the introduction to the work are heard, now augmented in time value. The music bursts into fury and the sonata ends with immensely powerful and ringing chords, but it is the shout of tragedy and not of victory. Thus closes a work that may well stand to-day as a musical representation of the composer's own life story. The sonata was first played in London on February 25th, 1902, by Lucie Mawson. OPUS 46. TWELVE VIRTUOSO STUDIES, FOR PIANOFORTE. _Composed_, 1893-94. _First Published_, 1894 (Breitkopf & Härtel). 1. _Novelette_. 2. _Moto Perpetuo_. 3. _Wild Chase_. 4. _Improvisation_. 5. _Elfin Dance_. 6. _Valse Triste_. 7. _Burlesque_. 8. _Bluette_. 9. _Traumerei_. 10. _March Wind_. 11. _Impromptu_. 12. _Polonaise_. These studies, while indicated by the composer as requiring advanced technique for performance, are full of poetical thought and tonal beauty that make them worthy of study. Many of them possess that Nature tone painting, that mystic, subtle romanticism of whispering tree-tops and elfin glades, that freshness and open air spirit which distinguish MacDowell's later short pieces.