Music Review : Yamashita Tangles With Mussorgsky at Ambassador

When Nagasaki-born guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita made his Southland debut six months ago, he shocked and awed with his brilliantly executed, but excessively showy arrangement of Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. Wednesday night at Ambassador Auditorium, he ventured a similar transcription of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” with virtually the same results.

Yamashita’s arrangements of popular classics are achieved by an assault on the music, rarely a savoring of it. Aggressiveness, even brutality, typify these acrobatics, accompanied by antics of standing up at the end of a phrase, raising his guitar from his lap, resting his cheek on the side of the instrument and swiveling his head like a robot.

Mussorgsky’s piano suite is transformed into an etude of frenetic strummings, deftly executed harmonics, rapid-fire passages and extended techniques that supersede any traces of passion, joy or pathos that the original music intended. In performance, Yamashita’s fingers, hands, arms and body contort and scurry to the overwhelming demands of his remarkable talent, leaving the listener exhausted, but impressed.

Movements such as “Gnomus,” “Ballet of the Little Chicks,” “The Market Place at Limoges” and “The Hut of Baba-Yaga” were executed so hurriedly that accuracy in hitting all the notes could be measured only by a percentage--usually between 60% and 70%. Given the limitations of the guitar, the slower, more grandiose movements, such as the opening “Promenade” and the closing “Great Gate of Kiev,” replaced pomp and volume with often percussive, high-tension right-hand movement--including a violent closing tremolo strum that must have produced a great deal of heat.

Also performed were the slow, meditative three Folios by Toru Takemitsu, an engaging alternative to the other fireworks offered. Koto-like pluckings, heavy vibrato and pitch bending made the music especially Oriental-sounding and virtuosic.

Other fare included Yamashita’s flashy arrangement of Bach’s Sonata No. 2 for Unaccompanied Violin and a vigorous interpretation of Sor’s “Variations on a Theme of Mozart.” .