Pablo Sáinz-Villegas: The Blue Album
Sony Classical
Classical guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas has appeared on some of the world's most renowned stages, recorded with prestigious orchestras, and performed to audiences in the thousands. He's played with the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the National Orchestra of Spain, and has played before an audience of 11,000 at Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival and also before members of the Spanish Royal Family and other world leaders. Yet what distinguishes his second solo release more than anything is intimacy, The Blue Album being one of those recordings where it feels like there are but two people in the room, the performer and you.
While he's an indefatigable promoter of Spanish classical guitar repertoire, this new collection presents material by composers from an array of locales, including America, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Such a move is consistent with someone born in La Rioja in Northern Spain but who has called New York City home since 2001. Sáinz-Villegas possesses a virtuosic command of his instrument, but The Blue Album is less about technical dazzle than the nuanced articulation of feeling, atmosphere, and mood. To that end, he executes the fourteen inward-looking selections with poise and sensitivity.
One might anticipate that a project so conceived would include selections by Debussy and Satie. Reflecting smart curatorship, Sáinz-Villegas enhances theirs with ones by Philip Glass, Max Richter, Ryuichi Sakamoto, François Couperin, Leo Brouwer, Fernando Sor, and Silvius Leopold Weiss, and the guitarist even works into the set treatments of Sebastián de Yradier's beloved habanera “La Paloma” and Stanley Myers' “Cavatina,” the latter familiar to many as the gentle theme from Michael Cimino's 1978 film The Deer Hunter.
The Blue Album begins with the first of the three Gymnopédies, which the guitarist renders with all of the delicacy and finesse it requires; the piece never fails to enchant and does so once more in the expertly paced treatment by Sáinz-Villegas. The first of Satie's Gnossiennes also appears, this more dramatic setting exuding atmosphere and mystery and as spellbinding as the other. As entrancing is the guitarist's interpretation of Couperin's lilting “Les barricades mistérieuses” (from his Pièces de clavecin, Book II), composed for harpsichord in 1717 and sounding tailor-made for classical guitar in this graceful iteration. Brouwer's wistful Canción de Cuna (Berceuse) and Debussy's serene “Clair de lune” (from Suite bergamasque) prove transporting, their impact bolstered by Sáinz-Villegas's expert handling of tempo and dynamics. “La fille aux cheveux de lin,” the eighth piece in Debussy's first book of Préludes, showcases the precision of the guitarist's attack, among other things.
Highlighted by its haunting trilling figure, Glass's “Orphée's Bedroom” (from Orphée Suite) shows why the composer's music continues to strike a chord, even if at a minute-and-a-half it's over quickly. Short too is Richter's "A Catalogue of Afternoons" (from The Blue Notebooks), though it also makes an impression. Sequenced fittingly at the end, given his recent passing, is Sakamoto's poignant “Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence” from the score for the same-titled 1983 film. Some pieces come from centuries past yet sound perfectly at home alongside the recent fare, and, stylistic differences aside, each artfully executed selection beguiles in its own way.October 2023