Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, KV 310

Written in Paris in 1778, during the months when Mozart was job-hunting there and in which his mother died in the city. It is his earliest minor-key piano sonata. The first movement runs on a relentless hammered left-hand chord that gives it a strained forward pressure; the lyricism of the slow movement is broken off mid-way; and the finale ends in fast, almost expressionless figuration.