Folías

It’s hard to imagine Roberto Sierra’s new guitar mini-concerto Folias not becoming one of the most popular pieces of new classical music: it’s tuneful, soloistically flashy and has some ethnic exoticism thrown in to boot. Hopefully it will be the piece that makes Roberto Sierra a name known outside circles of contemporary music aficionados. Perhaps to show off how “listener friendly” this music is, it is paired on the CD with concerti by Vivaldi which inveterate record collectors will probably claim they do not need additional recordings of, despite Daniel Felsenfeld’s program notes which go at great length to justify the pairing.

—FJO