Roberto Sierra Symphony No. 6; Sinfonietta; Fandangos; Two Pieces; Alegría Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Domingo Hindoyan Onyx ONYX 4232 64:45 mins
In an overview of this vivacious portrait album from conductor Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, composer Roberto Sierra notes that ‘looking back is not something I often do’. It feels true of the works themselves notwithstanding their 25-year span: vibrant and warmly expansive, while not divorced from their musical heritage, each seems to surge perpetually forwards in sheer delight at the possibilities of rhythm and colour, embracing a wealth of musics old and new.
Born in Puerto Rico in 1953, Sierra is recognised worldwide for his distinctive post-Romantic, Iberian-inflected Caribbean-Latin voice. Here Fandangos (2000) most explicitly engages with history. Exploring possible lineages of that dance through Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean, a complex tapestry of melody and rhythm is woven via the fandangos of Soler, Boccherini and Domenico Scarlatti.
Yet the past is present elsewhere too, the orchestra rising with aplomb to meet Sierra’s joyfully sophisticated sensibility. From the ecstatic outbursts of the brief Alegría (‘Happiness’, 1996) to the wilder corners of the four-movement, city-cum-jungle-inspired Symphony No. 6 (2020-21) composer and orchestra alike pivot smartly from salsa to Beethovenian scherzo, danza to pastoral, the dissonances fleetingly suggestive of the modernism of Sierra’s sometime teacher Ligeti.
Beneath the infectious surfaces, structures are tightly wrought – further underlining the eclecticism of Sierra’s engagement with history: while the Symphony and earlier Sinfonietta for String Orchestra (2020) deploy sonata form as an ‘historical framework’ within which traditional popular dances come alive, the finely balanced Two Pieces for Orchestra (2017) hints at a more intimate age-old tension between agitation and exuberance.
Steph Power