Beethoven: Sonata No.8 in C Minor, , “Pathétique“ (Feltsman, Lortie, Korstick)

The Pathétique was famous right from the moment it was performed, and it’s not hard to see why – it contains three incredibly attractive movements with very different characters unheard-of expressiveness, and contains some of B.’s best motivic manipulations. The first last movements are unified through a single theme (heard, among many other places, at the opening of the first movement, the second theme of the first movement, and the opening of the third), and both are also internally tightly bound together by a set of their own recurring motifs – there’s hardly a bar of material that’s superfluous or untethered. The first movement also features strangely orchestral textures – there’s the thrumming tremolos, the bassoon in the first theme of the second theme group (3:45), and the tutti that is the second theme of the second theme group (4:26). It’d also be remiss not to mention that the second movement is, well, extremely pretty. MVT I, Grave INTRODUDCTION 00:00 – The introduction of a C-D-Eb (tonic, sup