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Fanfare

Japanese-American pianist Tamami Honma has recorded one of the most challenging Beethoven piano sonatas surveys I’ve ever heard. I mean that neither as a value judgment nor as the proverbial damning with faint praise. Her set stands apart from many others for several reasons, the first of which is quite practical in that she includes the three 1783 sonatas, as should occur given their merits. That said, there’s much more to the case she makes for all 35 sonatas, and it may be simplest to suggest, by way of citing outstanding qualities, that Honma is an explorer of place, of region. It seems fair to ask: Who isn’t? That granted, I suggest that as I’ve come to terms with her series of recordings, I am repeatedly aware that, unlike so many more traditionally-minded artists, she exposes often neglected details in areas large and small in a way that doesn’t so much isolate as highlight them, completely revitalizing their contexts.

As op. 110’s third movement begins, Alfred Brendel’s 1970s Phillips version exudes a meditative calm, slowly arching its way through long-breathed phrases while maintaining a tranquil mood until the ascending arpeggio paves the way for Beethoven’s vocal melody. Twenty years later, while the arpeggio is more completely separated from preceding events and Brendel’s tempos are more relaxed, his overall conception has not changed. I use his recordings as a point of comparison because Brendel shares with Honma a penchant for exposing minute changes in articulation in all three of his cycles, but like the context in which he does so, there’s a gentle unity to his playing. Extremes are often avoided in favor of mildly unfolding narrative. Honma tells an entirely different story. Hers is a narrative of meditation and disruption. When that arpeggio occurs at 0:28, it sweeps the board, with that top note, the first of the exquisite melody, a complete statement, becoming a declaration and a salvo. When the repeated G-Major chords (8:18) lead to the fugue subject’s inversion, each is a similar statement, each voiced slightly differently as it provides the next with energy. The more power they accrue, the more overtones emerge, and the sequence becomes a shattering experience that is then countered by the fugue’s reemergence.

I dwell on this moment at length as it’s indicative of Honma’s Beethoven, her vision of the stylistic and epochal interstices these sonatas inhabit. This is where the importance of those three very early sonatas becomes crystal clear. There is the rather astonishing way she renders the call-and-response dialog opening the third, but it is the second where Beethoven the young visionary is revealed. Honma’s playing of it and of the Pathétique is of a piece, certainly a fitting approach, since, as annotator Julian Brown observes, Beethoven revamps the slow introduction in the F-Minor Sonata as he would in its later and much more famous C-Minor counterpart. Beethoven’s intuitions for era-bridging began even before his cantatas of 1790, where I had previously imagined the point of transition, and Honma makes this argument with interpretive cogence. Along similarly boundary-blurring lines, the final movement of her Tempest is Classicist in itssymmetry, uninterrupted even by the occasional use of slight rubato, but its sudden changes in mood point the way backward and forward, evoking shades of the fantasia tradition which itself prefigures the Romanticism then still nascent.

Production values play an integral role in the qualities that make this set unique. I have seldom heard a piano recorded with so huge a dynamic range. This has advantages, as with the overtones I outline above, but beware of listening at too high a volume. The Steinway’s brightness can become overwhelming if listening levels are too high. Honma’s recording is no replica of a concert hall experience, with its distant perspective coated in a blanket of reverberation. We are up-close and personal, the combination of atmosphere and detail working splendidly given the kinds of phrasing with which Honma imbues each sonata. Indeed, there’s a level of subsection interrogation that is always refreshing, and in this, Frederich Gulda’s Amadeo series might be the closest point of comparison in terms of a kind of studied spontaneity. Honma is frugal with the pedal, but this only serves to promote textural clarity. Her counterpoint is second to none, so that the fugal sections of Beethoven’s final set of sonatas come off as convincingly as I’ve ever heard them.

Is Honma a Classical Romantic, or is it the other way around? It hardly matters when Beethoven playing of this stature and invention graces my speakers. While I have focused on a few examples to make the overall point, suffice it here to say that hers is a set not only rife with the kinds of detail that brings the listener back for more but brimming with the vitality that brings each sonata to life. The final movement of her Appassionata exemplifies perfectly her approach in toto, bristling and buzzing its way forward with each harmony and intertwining harmonic strand perfectly executed. She never misses a sudden harmonic trick, and again, the recording’s dynamic range places every nuance front and center. Putting the two op. 49 sonatas in their proper chronological position was also an inspired choice. Yes, Honma’s is a challenging vision, but it’s remarkably complete and endlessly rewarding.