The Bay Area-based Japanese-American pianist Tamami Honma serves on the music faculties of Stanford University and Santa Clara University, while maintaining an international itinerary of performing and master class engagements. She’s also found time in her busy schedule to record Beethoven’s “Complete 35 Piano Sonatas”. These include the three youthful “Kurfürst” sonatas WoO 47, hence 35 instead of the canonical 32.
At first I was struck by the lean and astringent sonority of her piano, where louder moments in the higher registers convey an aural “buzz” akin to certain period instruments. I’ve since learned from Dr. Honma that she recorded the sonatas on her very own 1990 Steinway concert grand, although she keeps a period Broadwood next to the Steinway for reference purposes.
The cycle’s extensive annotations by Julian Brown draw attention to Honma’s adherence to Barry Cooper’s edition published by Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, which incorporates numerous revisions of phrasing, dynamics, pedaling, accentuation, and, on occasion, the notes themselves. This may explain Honma’s proclivities for finely honed detaché articulation and discreet pedaling, along with her linear orientation and tendency to focus on details over the proverbial big picture.
In the A major Op. 2 No. 2 Rondo, for example, Honma’s delicately turned right-hand lines find more of an intriguing foil than warm support in the non-legato left-hand accompaniment. She informs the same opus number’s F minor and C major sonata Scherzos with a breezy and angular feeling of one beat to the bar. Op. 7’s Allegro molto may not be the most rollicking and joyous reading to be had, but the F major Op. 2 No. 2’s Presto Finale has all of the wild abandon that the C minor Op. 10 No. 1 Prestissimo Finale ever-so-slightly lacks.
By contrast, Honma’s conscientious cross-rhythmic phrasing in the D major Op. 10 No. 3 Menuetto justifies her measured tempo, whereas her brisk Op. 14 No. 2 Andante undermines the music’s mysterious undercurrents and the impact of the rests. Although the B-flat Op. 22 begins with an imaginatively characterized Allegro con brio, the remaining movements sound relatively prosaic and studio bound. However, the “Funeral March” Op. 26 and “Moonlight” Op. 27 No. 2 contain some of the most inspired and dramatically contrasted pianism in Honma’s cycle.
Listeners accustomed to a genial “walking” Andante in Op. 28 will be startled by Honma’s terse sprinting. I love the variety of touch and shifts in emphasis that Honma brings to the Op. 31 No. 1 Allegro vivace’s desynchronized chords, as well as the pianist’s fervency in the “Tempest” Op. 31 No. 2 first movement. Her fast tempos for the Scherzo and the Presto Finale of Op. 31 No. 3 occasionally border on breakneck, with more than a few dangerous accelerations. It’s one thing to play the “Waldstein” coda’s infamous octaves from the wrist rather than as glissandos, but quite another to slow down in order to accommodate that passage comfortably, and, as a consequence, stop the music’s momentum in its tracks.
Honma’s stern, dryly detailed “Appassionata” Andante con moto leaves lyrical respite at tradition’s door, but her driving yet flexible outer movements are right on the money. The pianist similarly trades surface elegance for edgy inflections throughout Op. 54’s opening Menuetto, although it took several hearings to convince me. She gives a surprisingly broad and even Romantically tinged interpretation of the little Op. 78 sonata’s first movement, yet proves a bit heavy in Op. 79’s outer movements, and rather foursquare in Op. 90.
“Les Adieux” Op. 81a stands out for Honma’s combination of brashness and rhetoric in the first movement, not unlike Artur Schnabel’s arresting conception. Do I hear traces of Schnabel in her emphasizing the right hand’s lower notes in the opening of Op. 109’s first movement? I would have expected this pianist to have taken more chances in the Op. 101 March and Allegro Finale, to have aimed for Beethoven’s controversial metronome marking for the “Hammerklavier” Op. 106 first movement, and to have let loose more in the fugal Finale; still, these clear, vital, and engaging renditions stand their ground in a crowded catalog.
Honma’s unorthodox yet carefully pondered tempo relationships in Op. 110’s fugue and Op. 111’s Arietta take some getting used to, and are worth a review in themselves. One can surmise that Honma put a great deal of thought, research and practice time into this project, and her most stimulating interpretations provide food for thought.
