What this movement leaves standing is grief with nowhere to put itself. The piano enters alone with a melody that behaves like an aria with the words removed: phrases that lift, falter, and settle just short of comfort. Around that voice the orchestra acts less like an opponent than like a witness, answering and supporting the lament without taking it away.

Once, the music attempts escape — a brighter, flowing tune, almost pastoral — but it cannot hold; a darker pull draws the soloist back down, and the opening lament returns more ornately, with no more hope. The ending refuses both resolutions: no triumph, no collapse, just a final chord decaying into the hall. Not consolation — a sorrow given room to stay.