By last year, I had worked my way through Beethoven's piano sonatas up to the last 32. And from this year, I decided to work on No. 8 and No. 14, which I had not performed before. I started with No. 8, "Pathetique. It seems to have been written when he was less than 30 years old, and it conveys a feeling as if he was directly colliding with something, which is completely different from the deep and calm emotion of his later years. The same "Pathétique" has a different spirit from the tragic atmosphere of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, which was written a hundred years later. So even though they are translated as "pathetique," they have very different meanings. The French word "Pathétique" has various meanings. I think we need to be careful about whether the Japanese-translated title itself accurately reflects the essence of the music. Therefore, it might be best to avoid assuming that the translated title truly represents the music it is supposed to describe.
My musical advisor suggested that we start to input with the second movement, then the third movement, and the first movement in that order. The idea was to consider how the tempo accelerates from the second movement (Adagio cantabile) into the third, and how the powerful, striking chords that open the first movement connect to the beautifully expressive second movement.
As I mentioned before, I used Synthogy's Ivory3 as the sound Library. This allows you to control the hardness of the hammers, so I adjusted the hardness slightly lower.
My advisor's impression was, "Let's give it some more time and listen to it again...”
Title: Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.13 "Pathétique"
Sound Source: Synthogy Ivory3
Audio file format: mp3 (for those who listen directly on a PC)