Hardest movement in the Pathetique Sonata?

[kghayesh]

Just wondering.............

[mlsmithz]

Who voted for the Adagio??  Am I missing something about that movement?  Anyway, I voted for the first movement - those left-hand tremolos are nasty.  My teacher refused to teach the first movement to his students because he said that either you could sustain those tremolos for the entire piece or you couldn't, and if you couldn't, there was nothing he could do to change that. (Nothing he could do, this is - I don't know for certain that there is nothing anyone can do if you can't play tremolos for more than a few seconds at a time.  I presume he also didn't teach such pieces as 'Chasse-neige' or the Shostakovich Prelude Op.87 No.14 for similar reasons, but I never asked him because I didn't hear those pieces until I was no longer his student.)

[thierry13]

Some people think it's musically challenging because it is slow but anyway, the first movement is still more musically challenging AND more technically challenging.

[phil13]

I find the tremolos easy. As long as you can keep your hand relaxed, you're fine. Of course, I've been training my left hand for a while to get those trmolos, and it helps that I'm left-handed.

I still voted for the 1st movement because it is surely a test in a student's technique and musicality. My biggest problem is not the tremolos, it's those fast jumps and plunges the right hand takes over the left hand to sound the bass melody. Those are insane and take LOTS of practice to perfect and hit the right notes.

On this topic I've wondered why so many people play the Grave sections so fast. Does anyone know? Or do I just play them too slowly? I take the tempo of 8th note=40 (got the idea from Brendel's recording)

Phil

[thierry13]

I still voted for the 1st movement because it is surely a test in a student's technique and musicality. My biggest problem is not the tremolos, it's those fast jumps and plunges the right hand takes over the left hand to sound the bass melody. Those are insane and take LOTS of practice to perfect and hit the right notes.

Proof that people are different, it took a lot of time before understanding how the tremolos should be made, but the jump section wasn't even a challenge ! It took a hell of a lot of time before to understand how to do the tremolos tough. But just the fact that my teacher said : you must use your fingers, not your wrist... 5 minutes later I could play them well  haha so I guess it's really a question of understanding the movement more than having the ability to do the movement!