The older I get and the more classical guitarists I hear, the more I appreciate Yamashita's approach to playing. Here is a musician with a real, coherent, vision of the music he plays, not just someone who reproduces a received paradigm. His sense of drama and his extraordinary spontaneity result in performances filled with so much more life than the vast majority of classical guitarists. He seems to get to the very heart of a piece and create it anew with each performance. It's true that his nails click against the strings and that his tone can occasionally have a rough edge to it, but what does mere technical etiquette matter compared to artistic intuition and spontaneity of expression. I'd rather hear his wild, untamed, raw brilliance than any amount of the insipid, anodyne slush that so often seems to constitute the accepted approach to classical guitar.
I get the impression that he simply accepted that the strings are going to crack out when he pushes them, and that's the sound of the guitar. If his guitar was more dynamic he would have had better tone, but few guitars can handle being pushed that hard.
Classical guitar somehow become the duodenum or appendix of music where the most retrograde of superuptight white men collect, the seed hulls and chaff of musical history, angry they are so marginal.
A lot of people disagree with this interpretation of the music and they are by no means required to like the way Yamashita plays, but I wish people would stop mistaking their difference of taste with what they presume to be Yamashita's lack of musicality. I often disagree with his interpretations as well, but seeing him live was one of my more memorable concerts. Few musicians play with as much conviction and skill in executing their visions as Yamashita. He is truly a gift to this world.
I agree he is a gift, which I accept with gratitude. I would be pleased if the 'comments are turned off' could be activated - then we would be spared the useless, vacuous opinions of these 'experts' who think they know better than all of us. These people are overbearingly arrogant.
Well said, sir. God can play this piece and there will always be an asshole or two who will find something to criticize. If anyone has something negative to say about this performance, please, show us your rendition.
People disagree about this interpretation? About what movement? The third? It's an Allegro Solemne, it's not to do a lot of dinamics, like almost everyone who plays this piece does. For myself its one of the best interpretation I ever heard.
A acentuação, a dinâmica e o fraseado nessa execução são incríveis e praticamente imbatíveis. Composição maravilhosa de Barrios x execução impecável de Yamashita.
@@seymourtompkinsTo me Azabagic’s performance made it about his excellence in playing according to a certain convention and was not at all engaged with the composition. Everything was homogenized into an oversmooth “tone” that is more about legato than actual tone color. I would love to have his technique! But I would be hungry for an expanded world of music . . .
@@katebloggs8243 Interesting impression, Kate. I can understand how he can be perceived that way. I agree, sometimes perfect technique can (ironically) work against a performance, making it sound sterile , flat, or academic. In this case, I love his performance, but I have experienced your reaction to other players on other occasions (they played so 'perfectly', I almost fell asleep). Btw, which player does this piece justice, to your ear ?
@@seymourtompkins Barrios himself! Wow!! I found it incredibly varied in so many surprising, subtle ways. It felt more “guitaristic” and yet individual than maybe any other guitar playing of any other piece I have heard. For me, so much of classical guitar performance is a kind of signifying more than anything else, and it is a source of great disappointment. There is so much potential to the repertoire and instrument, yet I feel like most guitarists are slavish and limited to an idea. I love Yamashita’s version, too, and feel like it is the closest in deep approach. And by approach I mean a kind of exploratory freedom that parallel’s Barrios’s, not meaning that the interpretations were the same. I felt as convinced of his version as Barrios. Both felt so deeply realized and true to the same inner pattern but with different flowers off that invisible root. I just listened to Alexander-Sergei Ramirez playing the piece and quite liked it, though I think it is dwarfed by the level of imagination/invention in Barrios and Yamashita. Speaking of perfect technique, I am agog over Raphael Feuillatre, but had similar thoughts about his performance of Catedral as Azabagic’s. I am grateful to John Williams for championing Barrios, but his performance sounds like it was transcribed by Segovia.
@@seymourtompkins I should clarify about Azabagic’s Catedral. I did not get the sense it was about showing off, and I am able to see past technique, so while I think your point is probably true about most, I was not thrown by his technique, and I felt his interpretation was about service to an ideal that is about a certain tradition of beauty of tone production and “European” “aristocratic” imaginings. Almost an ideological goal, I think, and always in service of that goal, which the compositions serving as the vehicle/excuse for another demonstration of blue blood.
It's not easy to play the first movement slowly and still remain smooth because the notes fade quickly. He did a good job here. The last movement is also excellent. He played it quickly but at times paused at the right times to add excitement. Lesser players go the last movement like they are practicing a scale.
Maybe the allegro just goes against the performance practices because few people in the world are even able to make it sound so aggressive, this is an insanely delicate piece on the left hand, playing it feels like surgery and knowing this guy was able to get this sound out of these notes is just incredible and makes listening to this very exciting. Other interpretations may be beautiful and more familiar with barrios pieces but listening to him play it is like hearing the piece for the first time its a real thrill.
Great man, great musician and great composer Agustín Barrios! El Paganini de la guitarra de las selvas del Paraguay. A awesome performance by Yamashita.
My father played this beautiful music.... My father's name is teacher Sérgio de Pinna, classical and Popular guitarist here from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, my father has several guitar compositions for one and two guitars of unprecedented .🙏🙌
For those knocking down on his musicality, just consider this. I grew up listening to my father’s LP of Vivaldi, four seasons. So that recording must be in 1960s or even older. And guess what, any “modern/current” rendition of the same piece doesn’t sit well for me. They feel too fast. Fine to dislike his speed but that shouldn’t be confused with him lacking musicality as he has a passion which he express through his range, not the range people were used to before him. I can understand why large portion of the world of classical guitar rejected him. He was and still is just way ahead of time
Musicians enjoy and understand music more than the average listener, so while slower paced music often isn't stimulating enough for people in the modern age, musicians can feel that playing faster takes some quality away from the music. *This is written from perspective of someone who's been learning classical guitar for over 5 years. I'm pretty sure something like rock music might sound better faster etc
Eu imagino que até Agustin Barrios diria, Kazuhito executa essa peça de "bravura" melhor do que eu. Linda, perfeita execução. Velocidade, sentimento, tempo, alturas do som, arpejos, tudo perfeito. Fiquei fascinado, que assustei, "uai, já terminou?". Grato.
He played the third movement with energy. Every note was like a bullet shooted off. Although he played incredibly fast, which didn't harm the stability and the control of the dynamic of the melody.
This performance is so *clean*, incredible! Not only that but his control over the dynamics, voice leading, power and rubato are just incredible. This is my favourite performance of this piece yet (and I've heard hundreds!)
I shook his hand and was surprised at how soft and gentle his handshake was. Listening to him play one would imagine a very strong and dominant handshake. Not so.
This is the best interpretation of this often performed piece. However, I would enjoy hearing Yamashita perform it on a different guitar than the Ramirez he is using here.
Ive heard hindreds of people play this and apartvfrom Raphael Rabello who played as a warm up exercise.. haha...this has to be one of the most dynamic versions ever recorded. I shall go back and listen to barrios himself to see what he did with this, did Yamashita get inspiration from the greatest composer guitarist for clasdical guitar.
All I can say is that he saves a lot of money not having to hunk a grand piano around the world. Lucky there aren’t too many of him, it would put piano makers out of business.
Gentle snow! Peace and beauty! Profound majesty! The notes rain down! Brimstone pours forth! Hurricanes hurtle! Thunder rolls across the sky! HAIL Yamashita! Great God! To hear the guitar wielded thus…
I was just a child when the stars fell from the skies, but I remember how we built a cannon to destroy them and in turn, how that cannon brought war upon us. War was an abstract idea, nothing more than a show on T.V. As a child, I always saw it y happening on some faraway land, until on that final day of summer
A single-note line of the first movement could not be played so slowly and with so many nuances as this performance unless you could produce a clear tone and execute it with conviction.
Absolutely perfect when playback speed is set at 0.75, like most versions by great performers. The last movement is "Allegro SOLEMNE": it imitates Bach's music and evokes the awe of visiting a magnificent cathedral. There is nothing solemn or awe-inspiring about visiting a cathedral at galloping speed. Agustín Barrios had to cram a rather long piece onto the very short recording time of a 78rpm side: this is we have this "original" version that serves as a reference and has been imitated by all the great players who brought Barrios to Europe, North America and Eastern Asia, starting with John Williams, but musicians should not let technology think in their place: stylistically speaking this is not a good idea to match the speed of the original recording. What should be matched is the tempo indication.
Sorry to break it to you that there's no "should" or "must" in music, if that's how he sees it, all we can do is appreciate what he delivered, at most say we "disagree" No one is in the place to rightly judge an artist
@@zeinmrshd3037 Sorry to disappoint you, but art is both subjective AND objective. Tradition exists, facts exist, tempo markings exist: this is called “culture”. You’ve heard the term before, haven’t you? If this were not the case there would be no need for music teachers and music lessons to transmit the secrets of interpretation. An appropriate physical training with the support of a competent team of physiotherapists would be sufficient to produce virtuoso performers, and music performance would be an Olympic sport, not an art.
@patcartier8171 Nice point you're making here. Do you have some kind of source or reference about how the third part is supposed to be played? What it's supposed to evoke? I'm asking because: 1. even the standard speed of playing the third part is too fast for a solemnous walk in a cathedral. 2. The account that I've read about this piece is that: first part (the prelude) evokes the bells calling people to the mass; second part is the proper religious service; third part evokes walking away from the cathedral, after the service, in the crowded, multi-voiced, fast-paced streets and plazas. Now, I cannot idicate a source for this account (and I know that the prelude has been added several years after), but maybe you can indicate one for yours.
@@scherzo0o I am afraid I am going to disappoint you. I am a Frenchman, I have never been to South America, and my source is an oral source: my extraordinary guitar teacher from Argentina, Jorge Cardoso, who explained to me all that I have been saying in my initial comment when I attended one of his Masterclasses in the south of France twenty years ago. So, I have only one solid factual argument to bring to the discussion: the word "solemne" in "Allegro solemne". The rest I can bring to bear is only reasonment (about the recording technology in the mid-20th century) and oral tradition. Now, I was told that the prelude is not really part of "la Catedral", since the one written element that would prove that this prelude is the first movement of a three-part suite is one single concert programme. The tradition that I was taught has it that "la Catedral" is a diptych: 1. Andante religioso, 2 Allegro solemne and that's it. As for the bells, they can be heard especially in the octaves in the middle part of the Allegro solemne. Musically speaking, this seems plausible to me, since 1) church bells do not sound only in the high registers, and 2) once they begin to be sounded in real life the sounds tend to form a regular pattern. This regularity is more apparent in the rhythm of the octaves in the Allegro solemne than in the high-sounding notes of the prelude. So to me, the B minor prelude is a gem, but it is not part of "la Catedral", and thus I do not view it as a call for people to come to the mass. However, the Allegro solemne may very well be evoke what you say it does. Although when performing I tend to visualise the solemnity of leaving the cathedral in a procession on the occasion of a wedding, for example, and not the hustle and bustle of a crowd dispersing in "crowded, multi-voiced, fast-paced streets and plazas". I hope this gives consistence to the music, which by the way I cannot play anymore on the guitar since I caught a bad tendinitis several years ago, practising this very piece too much for my own good. I play it on the piano now, preferably with a harpsichord / lautenwerk sound that I am still tampering with, in a piece of software called Pianoteq. The harp sound available on Roland keyboards is also quite efficient for this piece. So is the natural sound of most acoustic pianos with no electronics whatsoever.
@@patcartier8171 No, I cannot be disappointed by such an elaborate answer. Thank you so much for your contribution to the discussion (which goes way beyond standard youtube articulation of an answer).
Очень интересная подача.... ни разу в таком темпе исполнение не слыхал, впечатляет. А вот 3-я часть малость с перебором по скорости и агрессивности. Мне как-то по восприятию ближе Эдсон Лопес и Дэвид Рассел.
In term of interpretation, david russel's version is I think more beautiful. But technically.. woow !! In classical guitar catagory... 'Yamashita' is 2nd to none.
God can play this piece and there will always be an asshole or two who will find something to criticize. If anyone has something negative to say about this performance, please, show us your rendition.
AS SPEED, EXCELLENT........BRILLIANT TECHNIC........BUT SOMETIMES MUCH MORE SPEED KILLS THE BEAUTY OF THE MUSC........HERE, IT HAS BEEN A SHAW OF SPPED......!
Funny how people always say John Williams is all about technique rather than musicality… this is technically amazing. But the clarity and tone compared to Williams of the opening movement is nowhere close for me.
The Allegro is shaped and executed brilliantly, the best I've heard. The prelude, on the other hand, is somehow disappointing, given the high expectations one usually have with Yamashita.
