Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea's musical pendulum is swinging away from Return to Forever's molten rock mechanistics and back to Corea's ultralyrical melodic style and, at least here, to his Latin roots. Corea himself may be of Boston-Italian ancestry, but since his early-Sixties days with Mongo Santamaria he's been especially adept at marrying Latin sounds to jazz. So when he records My Spanish Heart, a lighthearted set minus the screaming fusion guitar that was so essential to the old RTF, it's not much of a surprise. The music here hasn't the compositional depth of Corea's last solo effort, The Leprechaun, but it approaches the textural sensuality of the very first RTF albums.

Clearly inspired by the Spanish flamenco, Chick often claps and stomps along with his own keyboard playing, a combination most effective on the swirling "Armando's Rhumba," on which he's backed by Stanley Clarke's acoustic bass and Jean Luc Ponty's show-stealing violin, and during the 20-minute "Spanish Fantasy," which includes a remarkable percussive duet between Corea and everybody's studio ringer, drummer Steve Gadd.

Corea plays more piano than he does the six electric keyboards combined, and even the often shrill Arp is subtly blended with the rest. "Spanish Fantasy" and "El Bozo" are the second disc's two extended pieces. The first two sides contain eight shorts that exemplify Corea's bent for impetuous but controlled pop romanticism, which these days leans more toward classicism than jazz.

"Love Castle" and the brief title track are colored by the tasteful vocal orchestrations of Gayle Moran, Corea's housemate and new RTF partner. My favorites, though, are "The Hilltop," a long call-and-response acoustic duet between Corea and Clarke; and "The Sky (Children's Song No. 8)," a pensive, introspective piano solo. Perhaps Corea's next Polydor album will be Piano Improvisations, Vol. 3, a latter-day continuation of the brilliant solo ECM sides he recorded six years ago. (RS 236)

CONRAD SILVERT