A Guitar Piece Made for Pablo
John Williams crafts "Rounds" for Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, coaching the guitarist at his Los Angeles home for its world premiere.
Tracklist
- Rounds — Pablo Sáinz-Villegas
Transcript
Rounds — Pablo Sáinz-Villegas
The NFL has scheduled Spanish classical guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas to play Spain’s anthem before its Madrid game. Long before that stadium appearance, composer John Williams wrote Rounds for him; Sáinz-Villegas recorded it on Americano. Sáinz-Villegas recalls that Christopher Parkening, whose guitar competition he’d won, offered him the world premiere of Williams’s first solo-guitar piece. He received the score with just four weeks until the premiere. At Williams’s Los Angeles home, the composer asked him to play, then joined him on piano and went through the sections with him. Sáinz-Villegas says they spent three hours on a seven-minute piece. Hear Rounds by Pablo Sáinz-Villegas.