“Mozart would have been a good Cuban,” Sarah Willis was told on her first visit to Havana, when she spotted a bust of the composer in the historic part of the city. The comment inspired the Berlin Philharmonic horn player to investigate what would happen if you combined Cuban popular music – salsa, son, mambo, bolero – with that of Salzburg’s favourite son. Willis discovered a vibrant classical scene and the result is this joyous riot of an album going under the title Mozart y Mambo.
Mozart’s four concertos are central to any horn player’s repertoire, so of course there is “straight” Mozart on this disc. “Straight”, but not in any way “strait-laced”, for Willis’ rendition of the Horn Concerto No.3 in E flat major (K447) bubbles with amiable good humour. It was composed for Viennese horn player Joseph Leutgeb, who was often the butt of Mozart’s jokes. Willis, with her polished, golden tone, plays it with panache, beautifully supported by the Havana Lyceum Orchestra under José Méndez Padrón. There is cantabile ease to the central Larghetto and the finale twinkles along jauntily. Willis includes the less well known concerto fragment K370b (completed by super sleuth Robert Levin) and the E flat Rondo K371 which, with its athletic cadenza, Willis describes as “more strenuous than an entire Bruckner symphony”! And it’s Klaus Wallendorf’s cadenza here which (at 5’02”) hints at the Mozart mayhem elsewhere, for it includes a little Latin-American riff before the horn suddenly remembers it’s supposed to be playing “respectable” classical music and swiftly pulls itself into line. Wonderfully tongue-in-cheek.
If you thought Mozart was high-spirited though, the rest of the disc is peppered with spicy numbers, two of which take Wolfgang Amadeus as inspiration. Rondo alla Mambo, by Joshua Davis and saxophonist Yuniet Lombida takes the finale of K447 as its starting point, set to a mambo rhythm with catchy Cuban percussion. Similarly, the sassy Sarahnade Mambo is built on the familiar opening movement from Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
The Havana Horns
There are some genuine Cuban songs here, arranged by Jorge Aragón. Dos Gardenias is familiar to many listeners, thanks to the Buena Vista Social Club, while El Manisero, with great trumpet (Harold Madrigal Frías) and horn solos, was recorded live and you can taste the atmosphere. Qué rico el mambo is particularly special though. It features the Havana Horns, an ensemble Willis established on her second visit to Cuba for a flashmob performance in the Plaza de la Catedral. They repeat that performance here and it’s clear why Willis is proud of her “horn family”. Some of the proceeds from the album will go to buying instruments for more of Cuba’s aspiring young musicians, thus ensuring there will be even more Mozart in Havana!
This is a perfect, feel-good summer disc. I defy you to listen to it without tapping your toes or getting up and dancing!
Sarah Willis, Harold Madrigal Frías, Yuniet Lombida Prieto, Jorgé Aragón, Havana Lyceum Orchestra/ José Antonio Méndez Padrón; Havana Horns; The Sarahbanda (Alpha 578)