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In my personal experience, Tamami Honma’s recorded traversal of Beetho­ven’s complete piano sonatas is unique in at least a couple of ways. Whether another pianist before her has trumped Honma in this feat, I cannot say, for I’m not familiar with, nor do I have access to, every Beethoven piano sonata collection out there that stakes claim to being the oeuvres complètes, but of those I know and have covered in these pages, none is as complete as is Honma’s; for in her accounting of the sonatas, there are 35, three more than the standard 32 we commonly take to be the official canon. 

Actually, the three additional works are neither recent discoveries nor new to disc. They are, in fact, the three sonatas Beethoven composed as he entered his early teenhood in 1782–83. The scores bear a dedication to Maximilian Fried­rich, the Prince-elector (Kurfürst in German) and are thus nicknamed Kurfürstensonaten. No evidence remains, if ever there was any, that the Prince commissioned the sonatas, or that he did the princely thing and rewarded the precocious young composer with a gift. 

Surprisingly, however, the sonatas found their way to the Bössler publishing house in Speyer, Germany, virtually within days of their completion. So, they were known works and known to be by Beethoven from the start. But Bössler went bust in 1828, the year after Beethoven’s death, and the Kurfürstensonaten languished for a long time in the shadows of the composer’s mature piano sonatas, and, as indicated above, have rarely to my knowledge been included in recorded collections of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas. But that’s not to say they’ve been completely neglected on record. Most notably, perhaps, they were recorded by Emil Gilels, who, ironically, never quite completed his “complete” survey of the sonatas. Jenő Jando also took them up, as did period instrument specialist Ronald Brautigam. But admittedly, the choices are slim. 

If I belabor the point, it’s because the music history books need revising. Beethoven wrote 35 piano sonatas, not 32. While it’s true that the Kurfürstensonaten are juvenilia, English musicologist and Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper has argued that “A complete edition has to be complete, and if you ignore early works, you don’t show the longer trajectory of the composer’s development.” 

The Andante in F, WoO 57, which Tamami Honma also includes in her set, is not, by itself, a sonata, but rather the rejected slow movement originally intended for the “Waldstein” Sonata. Familiarly known as the Andante favori, unlike the Kurfürstensonaten, the ejected Andantemovement is very well known and well represented on disc. While a less galactic traveler than Bee­thoven would likely have retained the original slow movement, the new movement Beethoven composed to replace it is arresting in its originality. Harmonically vague, ambivalent, and unsettled, its equivocation is disquieting. Even the new movement’s title, “Introduzione,” is enigmatic. An introduction to what? The answer to the question, spoken in a soft voice, comes as the theme of the Rondo finale steals in. Hushed, as if in a state of reverential awe, it hovers mysteriously between the major and minor modes of the key, humble and meek at first, and then, gaining confidence and strength, it erupts in a blaze of blinding glory. Imagine what a lesser work the “Waldstein” Sonata would have been had Beethoven not replaced that middle movement. 

The other possibly unique aspect of Honma’s cycle is the order of succession she has chosen to follow, which is based strictly on composition date as opposed to cardinal number, opus number, or publication date. The effect this has on the distribution of the sonatas across the 10 discs that make up the set is seen as early as disc three, on which not only are the two so-called “easy” (leichte) sonatas, Nos. 19 and 20, opp. 49/1 and 49/2, placed ahead of the Sonata No. 4, op. 7, because the two op. 49 sonatas predate op. 7 by 10 years; but even the op. 49 sonatas themselves are given in reverse order—op. 49/2 first, followed by op. 49/1—because No. 20 (op. 49/2) was composed between 1795 and 1796, whereas No. 19 (op. 49/1) was composed in 1797. In this matter of ordering, Honma appears to be scrupulous and consistent, although truth be told, there don’t seem to be any such similar numbering discrepancies in the later sonatas; their cardinal numbers, opus numbers, and composition dates are reasonably in line with their publication dates. 

Three issues prior, in 48:3, colleague Marc Medwin submitted a beautifully written review of this very set, which introduced Tamami Honma to Fanfare and the magazine’s readers. I concur with every last word of Marc’s review and seriously doubt there is anything I could add to improve upon his stated opinions and conclusions. All I can do is to touch upon one or two things about the set that Marc didn’t cover. 

Honma performs the sonatas in the meticulously prepared, critical ABRSM (Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music) edition, published in 2007 by the earlier mentioned Beethoven scholar, Barry Cooper. His research was based on comparing original manuscripts, early editions, and historical sources, and his published edition includes detailed notes on performance practice, history, and source assessment for each sonata. 

The included 88-page English-only booklet, authored by Julian Brown, who is also the set’s recording engineer and co-producer along with Honma, is, itself, a work of art, as meticulously executed and beautifully presented as is Honma’s playing. Printed musical examples are included along with the description and brief analyses of each sonata. 

Well-known music critic and author Alex Ross is quoted in the second paragraph of the opening essay, summing up Beethoven’s special stature and place in the course of music history. It’s a paragraph worth requoting in full because it lends insight into the determinative impact that the originality, strength of character, and the moral and ethical persuasive power of Beethoven’s music has had on our humanity, culture, and civilization. 

In a New Yorker article, Ross observed that “Beethoven is a singularity in the history of art—a phenomenon of dazzling and disconcerting force— a composer who not only influenced all subsequent composers but also molded entire institutions including professional orchestras, the art of conducting, and the evolution of the modern piano. Even 20th century recording technology,” Ross noted, “was shaped by considerations of Beethoven’s music, with the first commercial 33⅓ rpm LP in 1931 stamped with the Fifth Symphony, and the duration of first-generation compact discs fixed at seventy-five minutes, long enough to play the Ninth Symphony without interruption.” 

In his review, colleague Medwin settles on Alfred Brendel’s three Beethoven cycles as reasonable comparisons to Honma’s approach. Among later 20th-century modern pianists, Brendel, of course, and also Rudolf Serkin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Wilhelm Kempff, and Maurizio Pollini, have long been regarded as near-definitive interpreters of Beetho­ven’s keyboard works. One wouldn’t go wrong with any of them, although Serkin is the only one of this group who did not record a complete cycle. 

What I would say of Honma’s playing is that it is characterized by the best of all of them. Of Brendel, she gives us his rhythmic control and intellectual rigor. Of Kempff, she brings us his animated style, sometimes puckish and playful, other times noble and filled with a sense of occasion, and still other times dark and probing. Of Ashkenazy’s Beethoven, Honma gives us its clarity of voicing, tempos that find the mean of the music and always feel right, and the comfort of knowing there’s a steady, knowing hand steering the ship. From Serkin’s style, Honma inherits a balance between opposing instincts for muscularity on the one hand, and subtlety in harmonic voice-leading and nuance in dynamics on the other hand. And from Pollini, Honma gives us his rigor and technical precision, but without the sense of compulsive virtuosity for its own sake that can impress but not always move us. 

To all of this, Honma adds her own set of ethics that guide and condition her personal voice and style. Most listeners familiar with Beethoven’s 32 (now 35) piano sonatas, I would venture, have a favorite one or two among them, or perhaps a single movement or two that carries some special emotional weight. There are, of course, the name-brand shoppers—those on the lookout for an illuminating new “Moonlight” or an impassioned new “Appassionata”—while others may wish to explore the less advertised offerings—like the “Moonlight’s” Cinderella companion, the E♭-Major Sonata (No. 13), op. 27/1. Whichever type of shopper you are, it doesn’t matter, for Honma’s Beethoven cycle, from beginning to end, gives equal justice to all. 

Are there performances of individual sonatas I would not want to part with? Of course: an evocative “Moonlight” by Cliburn that lingers in the memory, an electrifying “Appassionata” by Horo­witz, and a “Pathétique” and “Tempest” of frightening tension and dramatic urgency by Fazil Say, who, more often than not, plays with hair-on-fire intensity. His Beethoven might not be to everyone’s taste, but it can’t be said that it’s not special. 

Japanese-American pianist Tamami Honma is a onetime student of Byron Janis, who in turn was a student of Horowitz and both the Lhévinnes, Josef and Rosina, thus grounding Honma firmly in the great Romantic tradition. Currently on the music faculty at Stanford University and at Santa Clara University as both collaborative pianist and piano instructor, Honma adjudicates for international competitions and is regularly invited as a guest artist, performing and giving masterclasses at universities and conservatories in the U.S. and beyond. 

If there is one word to sum up Tamami Honma’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle, it would be “transcendental.”