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The large orchestral forces asked for in the Third Symphony, apart from the wordless chorus, include organ, piano, two harps and an important solo violin part, with a string strength of not less than 76 players. It is Enescu’s symphonic masterpieces, and in scope, power and organically unified growth it anticipates Franz Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony. Like Enescu’s other mature symphonies, it has three movements, with a fearsome scherzo placed second (there is no scherzo in either of its predecessors).

It opens with a solemn paragraph in slow 6/4 akin, in some respects, to the openings of Brahms’ First Symphony or Schumann’s Second (of which, in 1949, Enescu conducted one of the finest recorded performances) a noble theme of three important strands, almost Brucknerian in breadth. It is a magnificent beginning, the downward motion of which permeates the work’s entire atmosphere and established a wide tonal spectrum. As in Enescu’s Symphony No.2, the exposition is also developmental: variations of the third thematic strand provoke a sudden change of mood to agitated uncertainly, which fades to reveal a second group of supreme beauty, coloured with magical orchestration. The development, itself tripartite, builds to a powerful struggling tutti which achieves immense grandeur; from this, the music descends once more, until the hypnotic recapitulation reveals the opening themes, purged of fear and doubt, the music moving to an expansive ending.

The extraordinary scherzo, a study in multiple rhythm, has a constantly maintained sinister mood - such as we find in contemporary works of the period: Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, parts of Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony, Holst’s The planets or Grainger’s The Warriors. In Enescu’s scherzo we witness the expansive C major ending of the first movement undermined by C minor, a dichotomy astoundingly resolved in the finale, which begins with a wondrous still, slow introduction, a mixture of A minor and C major, perhaps the most "French" passage in the work. As it unfurls, we perceive that it is based upon aspects of the barely-remembered opening theme of the symphony, now appearing motto-like (and is also related to a subsidiary theme of the scherzo) but is discarded, in retrograde motion. The finale is a quintuple structure, the second part being announced by the entry of the wordless chorus - a magical moment. The chorus’s theme is also related to the main motto. The chorus is used entirely instrumentally, to add a fifth section to the usual woodwind, baraa, string and percussion of the orchestra. In this unique symphonic sound-world Enescu now raises his symphony to an altogether new plane: the themes strive ever upwards at first, in complete answer to the descent which permeated the first movement and the scherzo’s horror, to end the work in the resigned peace of C major deep in the orchestra.

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