Without a segue comes the roar of the lion in sonata format, something that Lou hadn’t used in a while. It’s in 4/4 time and marked presto agitato, “super-fast and agitated”. It returns to the tonic key of C# minor and requires extraordinary agility. Each arpeggio requires four thumb-tucks on the way up, and you need an agile wrist to pull it off. Real agility was never my strong suit at the piano.
The second subject at 10:27 is in G# minor.
The exposition is repeated.
At 12:49, he starts his development by jumping into C# Major (7 sharps!) before wending his way to F# minor.
At 13:55, he recaps and positions the second subject into C# minor without a transitional passage.
At 15:30, he heads into a coda with broken diminished chords, and Lou sounds like he’s bringing it to a close. But then comes the shock – he brings back first movement material in a slow cadenza! After two held notes, he sprints to the finish line.
This is a film of the late Claudio Arrau, one of my favorite pianists.
