Much of Arlene Sierra's compositional output centers on the natural world, addressing the subjects of landscape, evolutionary biology, and the sounds, processes and behavior of birds and insects. Arranged into three books, Sierra's Birds and Insects comprises 15 movements composed across a twenty-year period. The three books are performed brilliantly here by pianists Steven Beck (Books 1 and 2) and Sarah Cahill (Book 3). The album is the fourth in Bridge's ongoing Arlene Sierra series.

Sierra: Clarinet Works

Juan Carlos Garvayo writes: “I conceived 33 Dreams as sort of a strange trip to a supposedly shifting center that can be found both inside and outside consciousness. The dreams here are coded messages that help draw the map, and their poetic translation is the exerted result of their decoding in a precise language of symbols. In the road we find seas, magical places, real and imaginary persons, whirlpools, spirals, monsters, gods, abysses, and a myriad array of both typical and archetypal images found in the quest for my emotional, intellectual and poetic need. Roberto Sierra uses this trip structure, “journey” as he prefers to say (in fact, one third of the piece was composed during a cruise crossing in his Caribbean sea), in order to connect his 33 Dreams with the tradition of the great song cycles of German romanticism. In par with another journey song cycle, Winterreise, the music of 33 Dreams penetrates not only inside the poetic text, but also into its interstices, to achieve a superior level of comprehension in which the daydream acquires reality and reality blurs into daydream; Roberto manages in a prodigious way the capability of the symbolic adaptation of music to enhance the dream, to profile it and to vivify it, in such a way that it acquires another dimension fuller in content, meaning and beauty. The music also contributes to the text form and structure through an intricate net of musical parameters created by the composer: melody, rhythm, harmony, color and texture, which inject light and thickness to Ariadne’s thread within the poetic sub consciousness, inviting us to follow him as if a luring bait and thus making us enter into an initiatory trip of uprooting, stripping, pain, longing, illumination and return to origin.”

Cancionero

Over the last decade the music of the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra has become internationally admired, and this has led to prestigious commissions and performances around the world. Fandangos was heard at the BBC Proms in London and employs a harpsichord work attributed to Antonio Soler as a departure for a richly inventive orchestral fantasy. The dramatic Sinfonia No. 4 was described by ArtsNowNashville as 'a textbook example of how this composer breathes new life into old forms. The piece is basically a classic Germanic symphony imbued with Spanish sensibilities and reinvigorated with new harmonies and rhythms.' Robert Schumann is subtly evoked in Carnaval, five character pieces that explore mythical creatures, both menacing and serene.

Roberto Sierra was born in Puerto Rico and studied composition in Europe, notably with Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany. 'The three piano trios in this recording span seventeen years of my creative life,' he says.

Roberto Sierra is one of the freshest voices of recent American composition. The diverse folk traditions and popular music of the Caribbean have been in his blood since he was young, and he frequently evokes these cultures, tr.

Puerto Rico-born composer Roberto Sierra is internationally renowned for his integration of Caribbean music with the Western idioms he acquired during studies in Europe. The character of Kandinsky ranges from the intimate to the bold and virtuosic, responding with fresh and surprising impressions to a selection of Wassily Kandinsky's unique paintings. The 'Clarinet Sonata' explores the intricate swing of Caribbean mixed meters and instrumental colors in a work of stunning expressiveness and virtuosity. Sierra's longest chamber work to date, 'Treinta y tres formas de mirar un mismo objeto,' was composed for Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs, and is also one of the most substantial works in the repertoire for two performers at a single piano. This recording was made possible in part by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and Cornell University.

SIERRA Cicada Shell 1. Birds and Insects , Book 1 2. Surrounded Ground 3. 2 Neruda Odes 4. Colmena 5. Ballistae 6 • 1, 5, 6 Jayce Ogren, cond; International Contemporary Ens; 2 Vassily Primakov (pn); 3 Charles Neidich (cl); Stephen Gosling (pn); Daedalus Qrt; 4 Susan Narucki (sop); Raman Ramakrishnan (vc); Stephen Gosling (pn) • BRIDGE 9343 (72:30)


Born in 1970, American composer Arlene Sierra is presently based in the U.K., where she is a senior lecturer in musical composition at Cardiff University. Sierra has studied with some of the leading composers of our time, including Magnus Lindberg, and her music has already received many accolades. In recent years, Sierra has received commissions from esteemed orchestras and festivals such as the New York Philharmonic, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. For consideration here is Sierra’s debut CD, on the prestigious label Bridge.


There can be no doubt that Sierra has an uncanny ability to realize and build her musical ideas toward shattering conclusions, oftentimes literally so. But be forewarned: this is definitely not music for the fainthearted. While she may look like a pacifist on the album cover, Sierra is fascinated with the martial arts and writes music that is as intense as it is complex. Consider the sources of inspiration for three of the six works presented on this recording: Cicada Shell is based on The Thirty-Six Strategies , an ancient collection of battle tactics; Surrounded Ground is based on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War ; and Ballistae is based on a treatise by Vitruvius, which explains how to build and deploy ancient machines of warfare. Although not expressly inspired by military literature, the penultimate featured work, Colmena , which apparently means “beehive” in Spanish, is almost as vehement.


How does Sierra realize musical warfare? By pitting instruments and groups of instruments against each other; by organizing thematic content in small, repetitive cells that move in organized, militaristic fashion; by favoring bright textures that slowly grow in complexity; and by gradually turning up the volume. There is a lot of compounded dissonance and, save for the middle section of Surrounded Ground —which, ironically, is titled “Feigned Retreat”—there is essentially no repose in these four works. The cumulative effect is highly potent and, for that reason, I believe that Sierra’s martial music is best enjoyed—and, I dare say, intended to be enjoyed—in controlled doses.


But there is also a mellower side to Sierra’s music, which will likely also appeal to pacifists. That is featured in the remaining two works on this recording, Birds and Insects and the Two Neruda Odes . The former is a series of five mysterious works for piano, in which one hears hints of Ravel, Messiaen, Webern, and Berio. The highly expressionistic Neruda Odes for soprano, cello, and piano was probably inspired by Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire . Sierra’s setting of Neruda’s allegorical poetry—which pays homage to two common objects, the plate and the table—is truly masterly, as is the way in which she manages to build tension towards the end of the second ode.


The recording features uniformly excellent playing by musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Daedalus Quartet, soprano Susan Narucki, clarinetist Charles Neidich, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, and pianists Vassily Primakov and Stephen Gosling. Jayce Ogren, who conducts the three works for larger ensembles, deserves special praise for his mastery of these complex scores. The quality of the recorded sound is outstanding.


FANFARE: Radu A. Lelutiu

Arlene Sierra, Vol. 3 presents chamber music composed over a sixteen year period (1997-2013), by the brilliant composer. An American composer based in London, Arlene Sierra writes music that takes its impetus from rich sources including military strategy, game theory, Darwinian evolution, and the natural world. Her music has been lauded for its “highly flexible and distinctive style” (The Guardian), and its “remarkable brilliance of color, rhythmic dexterity and playfulness” (NPR Classical). Declared “a name to watch” by BBC Music Magazine, Arlene Sierra is the subject of a critically-acclaimed series of portrait discs with Bridge Records. She has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the MacDowell Colony and the Tanglewood Music Festival, and has had portrait concerts at the Crush Room, Royal Opera House, London, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Vermont and Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, New York. A Takemitsu Prize-winner and Latin GRAMMY nominee, Sierra has received commissions from BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Bremen Philharmonic Society, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Albany Symphony, the Cheltenham, Huddersfield and Tanglewood Music Festivals, and many ensembles and soloists.

This recording presents first performances of four recent scores by Arlene Sierra, the American composer, now living in London. Arlene Sierra’s music packs volcanic rhythmic power into compositions that are at once atmospheric, yet possessed of inexorable forward drive. The subject matter of Sierra’s compositions is far flung, and includes East Asian studies, evolutionary biology, entomology, game theory, siege engines, and architecture, to name but a few. In recent years Sierra has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and the Seattle Symphony, and both of these compositions are heard here. Sierra teaches composition at Cardiff University, Wales and the The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, led by their Principal Guest Conductor, Jac Van Steen, have played Sierra’s orchestral music more frequently than any other orchestra. Their superb performances capture the visceral quality and detail of Sierra’s virtuosic scores. - Bridge Records

Commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC, Roberto Sierra's Missa Latina "is remarkably organic in its expression: if it is music that sets out to be liked—perhaps loved—it is also a unified and, one suspects, deeply felt utterance of the heart...the Missa Latina will bring pleasure to a great many listeners. (Indeed, the ‘Sanctus’ could almost be turned into a pop song.)...I can't imagine anybody who starts listening to the Missa Latina wanting to turn it off before it is over."

- The Washington Post

Roberto Sierra’s refined compositional voice is subtly combined with contemporary musical techniques and his Puerto Rican heritage in the three works recorded here.

Cantares, commissioned by the Cornell University Chorus and Glee Club to celebrate the university’s sesquicentennial anniversary, evokes ancient Peruvian, Aztec and Afro Caribbean voices lost in time. The virtuoso Triple Concierto transforms the popular Caribbean rhythms of salsa, bolero and merengue into complex contemporary expressions, while the polyrhythmic layers of Loíza conjure a Puerto Rican town known for its strong African traditions.

Puerto Rico-born composer Roberto Sierra is internationally recognized and renowned for his integration of Caribbean music with the Western idioms he acquired during studies in Europe, and this release of recent works follows a whole series of much-admired and highly popular recordings of his music on the Naxos label. The most recent of these, Kandinsky (8.559849), was described as ‘a real find’ by Gramophone, and as presenting ‘mouth-dropping renditions of this music of supreme virtuosity’ by Fanfare. Sinfonía No. 3 ‘La Salsa’ (8.559817) was admired by ClassicsToday.com for ‘three highly entertaining orchestral works saturated with Latin rhythms and melodic motives’, and the Missa Latina (8.559624) was a GRAMMY nominee and summed up as ‘a powerful and individual major work performed with exemplary skill and commitment in superb sound’ by MusicWeb International. In other words, new recordings of works by Roberto Sierra are always a welcome and much in demand addition to the catalogue.

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REVIEW:

Cantares is performed atmospherically and with a thoroughly mystical character. In Loiza, the Afro-Caribbean dance Bomba is the starting point for polyrhythmic variations that are enchantingly dancing. It is an original and rousing work. Sierra has dedicated his Triple Concerto to the Arbós Trio. It is based on Caribbean music and popular rhythms. This work too is presented in an enthralling interpretation, so that this distinctive CD and the exemplary performances can only be strongly recommended.

– Pizzicato

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

We have on this disc three highly entertaining orchestral works saturated with Latin rhythms and melodic motives. The Symphony No. 3 actually casts a wider net than just “Salsa.” The performances, featuring Sierra’s home town team under the capable baton of Maximiamo Valdés, do the music proud, and the engineering is vivid.

-- ClassicsToday.com