Though timings suggest that Mikko Franck's account of the Pathétique is no slower overall than many other versions, it feels drawn out and laboured.
Franck declares in the sleevenotes that the work played a crucial part in his life, when he was seriously ill as a child, but this is not a performance that seems unduly personal.
The first movement takes an age to pull itself together, and never really punches home its points when required; the central pair of movements are energetic without being invigorating and the anguished phrases of the finale seem rather routinely tragic.
