Fusions of classical music with Cuban styles have been done before, for example, on
Tiempo Libre's fine
Bach in Havana release of 2009. Anyone who has twirled a radio dial (even on AM) while driving the Overseas Highway to Key West will be conscious of the fact that the long years of Soviet influence in Cuba left the country with a thriving classical music scene. That's attested to on this recording by
Berlin Philharmonic hornist
Sarah Willis, which features the fine
Havana Lyceum Orchestra in the Mozartian part of the program, along with Cuban mambo and jazz musicians. The
Mozart-mambo mixture is a difficult one, more difficult than
Bach and Cuban music, for the music of the Classical era depends on periods of shifting harmonic rhythm that are antithetical to the steady beats of Afro-Cuban popular styles.
Willis has plainly thought the problem through, and her proposed solution is mostly to juxtapose rather than try to fuse
Mozart and the mambo. Of the ten works on the album, just two, the
Sarahnade mambo (based on the first movement of the serenade
Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525), and the looser
Rondo alla Mambo ("inspired" by the finale of the
Horn Concerto in E flat major, K. 447, heard immediately before) are mixtures of the two styles, and what
Willis and composer/arrangers
Edgar Olivero,
Joshua Davis, and
Yuniet Lombida Pietro do is to snatch tunes from
Mozart rather than attempt a thoroughgoing fusion. Whether it works will be up to the individual listener, but
Willis's deeper question is simply that she has put
Mozart and mambo together on an album and asked, why not? The Cuban pieces, including the delightful
Que rico el mambo of
Perez Prado, are all enthusiastically performed by some famed Cuban musicians, and whatever one's perspective on the experiment, it's unlikely that listeners will find the album anything less than enjoyable. ~ James Manheim
