There is next a new theme, which seems to be handled like the second theme in the classical sonata form, but leads into a long section of recitative character, in which the second and third motives carry the music along to a singing theme, literally an augmentation of the drum motive. This is later hung with garlands of the ready-made variety, and then gives way to a treatment of the volplane motive in another passage of short breathing. The succeeding pages continue with this motive, brilliantly but by no means unusually varied, and there is a sort of stamping towards a climax, beginning _incalzando_. But this growth of noise is coarse-grained, even though the admirer may rightly say that it springs from one of the chief motives of the piece. It leads to a passage made up of the pompous second theme and a deal of recitative; but after this there comes a section in F-sharp major of very great beauty, and the _quasi adagio_ is hauntingly tender and intimate. These two pages in the midst of all the noise and so much that must be judged commonplace will surely seem to many the only ones worthy of a great creative musician. After them comes more grandiose material, with that pounding of chords for noise one remembers at the end of Thalberg’s fantasia on ‘Moses,’ then a sort of dying away of the music which again has beauty. A double fugue brings us back to a sort of restatement of the first sections after the introduction, with a great deal of repetition, scantness of breath, pompousness, and brilliant scoring. Just before the end there is another mention of the lovely measures in F-sharp major. There is a short epilogue, built on the three motives of the introduction. This sonata is a big work. It is broadly planned, sonorous and heavy. It has the fire of Byron, too, and there is something indisputably imposing about it. But like a big sailing vessel with little cargo it carries a heavy ballast; and though this ballast is necessary to the balance and safety of the ship, it is without intrinsic value. * * * * *