opening theme in chords returning at one point as (Bax put it) to 'what corresponds roughly to a trio section.' The music comes to a climax with the kind of triumphal march on a new version of the opening theme. 'This persists,' Bax said, 'to the end with ever increasing force and breadth of design.'" Overview Between April and June 1921, Bax wrote what was intended to be his Third Piano Sonata, placing that title at the head of the manuscript. Bax subsequently played the work, which Foreman called in the New Grove "fiercely new, and still romantic in impulse," for pianists Arthur Alexander and Harriet Cohen. Alexander had premiered the Second Piano Sontata, while Cohen had championed the revised version of the same work. Cohen remembered that when they heard this new piece, both pianists immediately realized that what Bax had written was not a sonata but a symphony; orchestrated in like manner to the composer's tone poems, it would indeed be an epic work. Bax agreed with them and began orchestrating the work. Finding the central movement overly pianistic for such treatment and uncomfortable with its tone of romantic nostalgia, Bax chose to replace it with a darker elegy in memory of the Easter Rising and its aftermath. After the symphony had been premiered in December 1922, the E-flat Sonata was forgotten and inaccessible until Cohen donated Bax's manuscripts to the British Library following his death. However, once the work was microfilmed and made available for study, interest began to grow in hearing it performed. Pianist and composer Patrick Piggott copied out the central movement as a separate work, and pianist John Simons was coaxed out of retirement to make a recording of the complete sonata, which was issued on cassette in 1982. Pianist Noemy Belinkaya gave the first public performance of the sonata for the Bax centenary in October 1983. In addition to Belinkaya, Simons and Piggott, several editors have worked on the manuscript, including Lewis Foreman, Graham Parlett, and Paul Hindenmarsh. A number of additional editorial points were made by composer and pianist John McCabe, which were included on McCabe's recording of the work for Continuum Records. References Foreman, Lewis, notes for Continuum CCD 1045, Arnold Bax: Piano Music (1992: London, C.L. Continuum Ltd.), John McCabe, pianist. Foreman, Lewis, ed. Stanley Sadie, "Bax, Sir Arnold (Edward Trevor)," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second