With a rush of harp and higher strings the Suite begins on ardent wing in exultant song of trumpets (with horns, bassoons and cellos) to quick palpitating violins that in its higher flight is given over to upper reeds and violas.  It is answered by gracefully drooping melody of strings and harps topped by the oboes, that lightly descends from the heights with a cadence long delayed, like the circling flight of a great bird before he alights.  Straightway begins a more pensive turn of phrase (of clarinet and lower strings) in distant tonal scene where now the former (descending) answer sings timidly in alternating groups.  The pensive melody returns for a greater reach, blending with the original theme (in all the basses) in a glowing duet of two moods as well as melodies, rising to sudden brilliant height, pressing on to a full return of the first exultant melody with long, lingering, circling descent.

The listener on first hearing may be warned to have a sharp ear for all kinds of disguises of the stirring theme and in a less degree, of the second subject.  What seems a new air in a tranquil spot, with strum of harp,—­and new it is as expression,—­is our main melody in a kind of inversion.  And so a new tissue of song continues, all of the original fibre, calming more and more from the first fierce glow.  A tuneful march-like strain now plays gently in the horns while the (inverted) expressive air still sounds above.

[Music:  (Oboe with 8ve. flute) (Oboe) (Horns) Calmato ed espressivo assai]

When all has quieted to dim echoing answers between horn and reed, a final strain bursts forth (like the nightingale’s voice in the surrounding stillness) in full stress of its plaint.  And so, in most natural course, grows and flows the main balancing melody that now pours out its burden in slower, broader pace, in joint choirs of wood and strings.

[Music:  Meno mosso e largamente (Woodwind above, strings below) (pizz. basses)]

It is the kind of lyric spot where the full stream of warm feeling seems set free after the storm of the first onset.  In answer is a timid, almost halting strain in four parts of the wood, echoed in strings.  A new agitation now stirs the joint choirs (with touches of brass), and anon comes a poignant line of the inverted (main) theme.  It drives in rising stress under the spurring summons of trumpets and horns to a celebration of the transfigured second melody, with triumphant cadence.  Nor does the big impulse halt here.  The trumpets sound on midst a spirited duet of inverted and original motives until the highest point is reached, where, to quicker calls of the brass, in broadest pace the main subject strikes its inverted tune in the trebles, while the bass rolls its majestic length in a companion melody; trombones, too, are blaring forth the call of the second theme.

Brief interludes of lesser agitation bring a second chorus on the reunited melodies in a new tonal quarter.