The most significant thing about hornist
Sarah Willis'
Mozart y Mambo: Cuban Dances is that it is her second album fusing the two genres named in the title; this alone takes the effort out of the realm of novelty and into that of an ongoing project.
Willis is not the first to attempt a fusion of classical and Cuban vernacular music; check out the Cuban jazz group
Tiempo Libre's
Bach in Havana album sometime. However,
Willis' reach is more ambitious than those of her predecessors. She is a bit naive, even condescending, in her notes, recalling that she wondered, upon being asked to give a master class in Havana, how many horn players there could be in Cuba. Under its years of Soviet control, Cuba had a solid Russian-style conservatory system with Russian teachers, and anyone who has ever twirled the dial on a drive through the Florida Keys can testify to the presence of classical music wafting across the Gulf of Mexico on Cuban radio -- on the AM band no less -- but
Willis gives full voice to several Cuban musical traditions. Perhaps the centerpiece here is the set of Cuban Dances for solo horn, strings, and percussion, a collaborative work by six young Cuban composers, each of whom was tasked with writing a short piece based on one of the various dance rhythms from across the island and incorporating a solo horn part for
Willis. This sounds like a tall order, but the pieces are tied together by Cuban percussion and work well; the work is sprightly and infectious, and one could imagine it taking on a concert life of its own. The musicians of the
Havana Lyceum Orchestra are also lively under the direction of
Jose Antonio Mendez Padron in the two
Mozart horn concertos, which receive engaging performances, although the lurch from
Mozart to mambo is large; the earlier album did more in the way of fusing the two traditions, but those who enjoyed the first
Mozart y Mambo album will find developing ideas here.
Christoph Franke earned a 2022 Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year in part for this release; this seems to have been less for the sound engineering, which was unspectacular, than for the oversight of what was a highly complex project, as a look at the album's acknowledgments will suggest. ~ James Manheim
