All four of MacDowell's piano sonatas are to some extent programmatic, and the third, dedicated to Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, is appropriately subtitled "Norse," taking inspiration from old Norse legends. MacDowell established the setting with some original verse published with the score:

Night had fallen on a day of deeds

The great rafters in the red-ribbed hall

Flashed crimson in the fitful flame

Of smoldering logs;

And from the stealthy shadows

That crept 'round Harald's throne

Rang out a Skald's strong voice

With tales of battles won:

Of Gudrun's love

And Sigurd, Siegmund's son.

Despite appearances, this is not Wagner's Ring cycle in piano reduction, but a sense of high drama and a theatrical flair can be found throughout the work. The first movement ("Mesto, ma con passione") begins lurking at the bottom of the keyboard, a primary theme striving upward. The melody becomes perspiringly heroic and MacDowell runs his material through a series of strenuous battle scenes offset by more reflective passages.

The slow movement is evocatively marked "Tristamente, ma con tenerezza." Its initial theme, very much in the style of Grieg's more serious keyboard pieces, rises chordally through a series of passionate little climaxes. The score eventually takes on a glittering filigree that becomes quite florid and impassioned, but the music ultimately subsides into something more bittersweet, delicately harmonized in the manner of Debussy except for some steely chord progressions near the end. The third movement, Allegro con fuoco, opens in a celebratory mood, but quickly moves into more strenuous material full of ringing chords and fast runs. The movement settles into a lyrical midsection (evoking "Gudrun's love?"), but the virtuosic clangor returns, only to dribble out in fatigue and fall back into the ominous bass rumblings of the sonata's beginning, evoking in its descent the opening figure of Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor before ending with a few ringing chords.

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