The second theme is given in the high register of the viola, with the other instruments softly accompanying sulla tastiera (near the fingerboard).
The slow movement features the cello in a pensive cantilena, and a shifting, unstable harmony that settles on E minor only at the end.
[2] The third movement is a fugal scherzo with a fleetness comparable to Mendelssohn and a dense chromaticism that recalls Schoenberg.
The first theme is dramatic, marked by contrasting textures, sharp dissonances, crescendos starting forte, irregular downbeats, and abrupt rests.
The urgent character of this movement is similar to Piston's finales from the early 1940s, and this may be because it, too, was written in wartime—the Korean War in the present instance.