Written in the year before Alberto Ginastera's death, the Piano Sonata No. 3 (1982) reflects the work of a composer at the end of a career spent assembling and assimilating a vast vocabulary of textural and harmonic techniques. There is no play in this work, no double meaning, irony, or guile: Ginastera is speaking with pure expression, his characteristic rhythmicality and angularity here serving as a recurring gesture rather than a governing framework.

The rather short (around six and a half minutes), single-movement work constitutes a large binary form with coda. Its impetuous character is facilitated by a persistent harmonic heaviness and textural viscosity, as well as frequent and jarring shifts of range. Modeled loosely after Amerindian dances, the insistent rhythms provide this composition with a sort of unpredictable inertia.

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