I can't speak for how MLF come to his judging, but when reviewing and re-reviewing your entry, I can't say that your supposed "Variation 3" is even a variation in and of itself. Sure, you changed the orchestration, but as I explained to you it came across more as a continuation of the shift to minor rather than a full on change of the theme.
Basically I feel like you didn't do enough to call it different from your second variation.
You should really reconvene with past you, because he seems to think differently
Like,
polar opposites differently
Creativity:
[/b]Overall the work felt like it developed organically and the variations came across more as thematic transformation, which is so much more sastifying in this context.
Var. 1) You shifted into minor at the start and remained there for most of the piece, which was an interesting direction. Here you largely just treated the mode change as the end-all for the variation, with an added countermelody for contrast.
2) The second finally has some playing with the melody, and it seems like you saved some of you creative energies from the first variation and put them all here.
3) A shift in 4/4, and it seems like your inner Beethoven wanted to creep out, heavily filtered through the temperament of Brahms, with a pit stop through Kirkhope. This is the real climax of the piece and leads rather well in to the finale.
4) Back into Major, and with a real nice overall grandioso section. It was a wonderful finale, it gave great closer that called back to the opening. Gives the work a very Liszt-ian kind of structure.
5) Inapplicable. 8/10
(second in this case being what I call the third, because you seem to have thought that the first variation was already in minor, thereby agreeing with what olimar said)
EDIT: Also, I can't even remotely tell from MLF's feedback why FireArrow got a 0 for criteria. It's apparent from maestro's, but apparently you disagree on the number of variations, yet agree that it should get the score indicative of not having enough variations?