Bax subsequently played the work, which Foreman called in the New Grove "fiercely new, and still romantic in impulse,"[4] for pianists Arthur Alexander and Harriet Cohen.
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.
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.
[5] 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.
In addition to Belinkaya, Simons and Piggott, several editors have worked on the manuscript, including Lewis Foreman, Graham Parlett, and Paul Hindenmarsh.