learn Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata

My classmate knows how to play this piece and I’m really looking forward to doing the same. Beethoven’s my favorite!

I’m learning the first movement now. I like this piece!

This looks tricky!!!!
But I love this piece….and as I got a digital piano last week, why not try?!

I mean if I ever came close to perfection, it was through this one. In order to do a good job with it I had to:
1) read EVERYTHING I could about Beethoven, especially about the time he wrote it which was crucial because that’s when he started becoming deaf.
2) the embellishments of the first movement have to be almost “visualized” in the hearing memory. I cannot describe it otherwise. To this day, when I “hear” them in my mind I can “see” the movement. Paying attention to detail is VERY important.
3) The passages of the first movement are simply beautiful. I have always chosen to play their minor version that, to the best of my knowledge, only Wilhelm Kempff used to play.
4) The most important thing is to analyze the piece to death. I cannot stress how important that is. I am referring to the whole composition from scratch because otherwise we are missing the whole.
5) The last movement: not too light, not too heavy. Just the right balance.
6) See it as a microcosm, a story with a beginning and an end.

This isn’t a piece that was part of my repertoire that I learned while I was taking lessons, so I’m starting from the beginning and putting it together page by page. It’s long too, so I’m just working on the first movement for now.
But what a gorgeous piece! I’d love to get it all learned!

It was very much worth doing, the first Beethoven sonata I ever finished.