San Francisco Classical Voice

Japan may not spring to mind as guitar country, but it was in fact, the first in Asia to adopt the instrument. Though distant from guitar centers in Europe and the Americas, it boasts a long list of performers and composers. Among the former is the internationally esteemed Kazuhito Yamashita, presented by San Francisco Performances and Omni Concerts in Herbst Theater on Saturday.

Yamashita drew an initially restless audience into rapt attention in the first moments with an extraordinary dynamic range, broad color palette and sensitive use of rubato. The anonymous Song of Compostela evokes an ancient Spanish shrine that has attracted religious pilgrims from all over Europe for almost 1000 years. Yamashita's sensuous playing imbued the work with an atmosphere of mystery.

The success of Yamashita and Japanese composers for guitar, whose number include Toro Takemitsu, is only a small indication of the extent of guitar activity in Japan. Born in 1890, Morishige Takei, is the best known of the composers for guitar active there in the first half of the 20th century. In 1911 he received a scholarship to study in Italy, where he first encountered the guitar. On his return to Japan, he conducted a guitar orchestra, performed solo recitals, organized festivals, wrote articles, and composed. His La Caduta della Pioggia Op. 11, is reminiscent of romantic Italian guitar music of the early twentieth century. A beautiful work, it was well suited to Yamashita's sensitive and colorful playing.

The first half of the recital ended with a major work, a transcription of J. S. Bach's Cello Suite #6 in D Major. Bach's six cello suites take the form of a group of Baroque social dances, which Bach transforms, without disrupting the element of dance, into personal and profound spiritual statements. In these works, Bach creates the illusion of a full harmonic and contrapuntal texture by means of single melodic lines that outline or suggest an interplay of independent voices. It is a technique originally developed by lute composers and perfectly suited to the guitar, although Yamashita's performance was a major disappointment.

The Suite in D Major, BWV 1012, is the last and grandest of Bach's set. It begins as a celebration and gathers spiritual overtones, the Prelude opening with a joyous exploration of resonating open strings and then flowering into an exultant cascade. Yamashita accented each note of the opening figure creating a ponderous effect. The sixteenth note passage at the Prelude's conclusion, while technically impressive, was forced and created the impression of a mere virtuoso showpiece. The following movements each failed to convey the dance rhythm that is their essence. The Allemande and Sarabande were given such a flexible pulse that they simply meandered. The Courante, Gavottes and Gigue were characterized by a relentless drive and muscularity.

The second half of the program began with a group of arrangements of music of the Beatles. The original music is beautiful, and the guitar effects showed an impressive range, but overall I felt Yamashita loaded these evocative melodies with impressive guitar effects which did not serve the music.

Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal, op. 70, is a set of variations on an "ayre" by the great Renaissance composer and lutenist John Dowland. The lyrics of the "ayre" are printed in Britten's score:
"Come, heavy Sleep, the image of true Death,
And close up these my weary weeping eyes,
Whose spring of tears doth stop my vital breath,
And tears my heart with Sorrow's sigh swoll'n cries.
Come and possess my tired thought worn soul,
That living dies, till thou on me be stole.

Nocturnal depicts different emotional states of the dream world in a series of variations. The burden of Dowland's "ayre," that sleep is a blessed relief from the worries of the waking day, is dramatized by a series of mostly disturbing variations depicting various mental states. Dowland's theme does not appear until the very end of the piece, where it synthesizes the fragments heard in the dream variations into a sublimely peaceful whole. The mood of each variation is made clear by the titles: 1) Musingly; 2) Very Agitated; 3) Restless; 4) Uneasy; 5) March-like; 6) Dreaming; 7) Gently Rocking; 8) Passacaglia ( a piece with a repeating base pattern, which in this case brings all the night fantasies to their climax); and 9) Dowland's theme--slow and quiet, molto tranquillo.

This is a major work and one of my favorites. After the Bach and Beatles arrangements I was not looking forward to hearing Yamashita's interpretation, but much to my delight, the interpretive skill shown at the beginning of the recital was in evidence throughout this twenty-minute work. Yamashita captured the mood of each variation in a well-shaped and sensuously beautiful performance.

(Scott Cmiel is a guitarist on the faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory and the University of California, Berkeley, SCmiel@aol.com)

©2000 Scott Cmiel, all rights reserved