"Blue stands for a particularly intimate mood," admits the exceptional Spanish guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas. Accordingly, the title of his new album is "The Blue Album," which will be released by Sony Classical in June 2023. "Blue symbolizes a mysterious in-between realm: just think of the moment when the sun rises and the night slowly retreats," Pablo Sainz-Villegas continues. These are moments of the extraordinary, moments between silence and awakening, between heaven and earth, between light and dark. And they are the moments that take us away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life into a mood of dreaming, relaxation and deceleration. All this is also reflected in Pablo Sainz-Villegas' new program. Hardly any composer has captured this atmosphere in his music as unmistakably as the Frenchman Erik Satie in his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Claude Debussy's Clair de lune and La fille aux cheveux de lin are also pieces of almost magical expression - music full of peace and magic. "This album brings together some of the most beautiful and intimate melodies ever written," says Pablo Sainz-Villegas, "All of these pieces create a magical atmosphere, their colors creating a mysterious mood. The guitar whispers an invitation to the listeners to explore the depths of their soul. It creates a moment to look inward and enter into a dialogue with one's very own self." The repertoire is correspondingly wide-ranging. It ranges from the German and Italian Baroque - with music by Silvius Leopold Weiss and Domenico Scarlatti - to the present, to Philip Glass and Max Richter's A Catalogue of Afternoons. Sainz-Villegas also ventures into film music: to the Cavatina from the classic The Deer Hunter from 1978. Not missing, of course, is the Spanish La Paloma, a real world hit, since it is one of the most frequently interpreted and repeatedly rearranged pieces of the last 150 years. It has become the epitome of longing.