Piano Concerto (Massenet) B major, is a slow, deliberate promenade featuring the piano prominently throughout. There are sweeping orchestral flourishes in the middle of this movement. Eventually the music comes to a restful reprise of the theme, and the movement ends quietly in a fading murmur. The third movement, in C minor, is subtitled "Airs Slovaques", alluding to the ersatz Slovak-like dance tune Massenet uses throughout. The brief 2/4 section towards the end evokes the virtuosic passages of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, before returning to the main theme, perpetually accelerating into tumbling passages in the piano and flamboyant outbursts in the orchestra. Massenet adds
William Mason (composer) York that introduced many works of Robert Schumann and other famous Europeans to Americans during the Civil War era and beyond, at a time when classical music still had little specifically American identity. Mason published numerous pedagogical works for the piano student, but is remembered above all for his Chopinesque compositions for piano. The American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) dedicated his second piano sonata, Op. 50 Sonata Eroica (1895), to William Mason. He died in New York City, aged 79. William Mason (composer) William Mason (January 24, 1829 – July 14, 1908) was an American composer and pianist