: Kazuhito Yamashita, Pictures at an exhibition

Kazuhito Yamashita is without a doubt one of the greatest guitar players and musicians of all times. Born in 1961 he belongs to a generation that saw when Neil Armstrong set foot of the moon in 1969... he already was an accomplished player when he saw the televised Apollo events. This generation of players carried the belief that anything is possible and when the ’80s came along they were ready to show it. Kazuhito went on to win every guitar competition in the world and in the mid 80s achieved his very personal “lunar landing“... he transcribed Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition for classical guitar and premiered the work in Toronto. Below is an excerpt from that landmark performance... This performance changed the guitar scene FOREVER ! The video quality is poor but what you see and hear is unbelievable... he was only 24 years old... hear and look carefully because this is perhaps the only time you will see the guitar reach such AMAZING heights... . . Pianist Barry Douglas had just won the Tchaikovsky piano competition playing the same piece and was the first Briton to win the competition ever. Therefore “Pictures at an exhibition“ was THE PIECE of the time... what nobody could believe was that such a minute instrument as the guitar could make it shine it did.... Yamashita invented innumerable techniques in order to play the piece being one of the most striking a tremolo played using the little finger ONLY (ch) which is a finger that is not normally used in guitar needed the other fingers to carry on simultaneous chords... I will examine the complete work in the future...