Part III begins with a throbbing horn dominant-pedal in F sharp minor below plangent Italian cries on the woodwinds. The music modulates back to D flat and reposes in an orchestral idyll. The piano establishes a low rumbling accompaniment against which the woodwinds suggest scraps of the previously heard Neapolitan song, transmogrified into a canzone a ballo in F minor. A solo cadenza leads the music on through various keys, like dancing through streets festooned for a festival. The strings take mutes off when the sun comes out in C major.
Piano solo is pitted against orchestra in mock combat.
A slightly graver section suggests a passing reminiscence of the slow movement. A new danza in B flat minor, in modo popolare, adds a note of insistence, and the piano heightens its brilliance by transposing it up a semitone and treating it in Italianate 3rds and 6ths that reek of garlic and tar. An unusual comic effect results from treating a popular Italian march as a Rossinian acceleration without the expected crescendo. This 'cuckoo' song will not be missed in its pointed bassoon and pizzicato orchestration. The march is prostituted into a tarantella.