Sarah Willis - Mozart y Mambo: Cuban Dances - Apple Music

The Mozart y Mambo proposition—to record Mozart’s horn concertos in company with traditional Cuban music—found favour with the adventurous, Paris-based label Alpha Classics. Any doubts about the project were blown away by Sarah Willis and her new friends in Havana, who together delivered one of the biggest classical hits of 2020. They’ve raised the bar higher still for its second iteration, Mozart y Mambo: Cuban Dances, which sets Mozart’s first two horn concertos in company with the first-ever Cuban horn concerto, a joint work created by six of the republic’s top young composers.

Mozart y Mambo: Cuban Dances contains the right ingredients for another hit album. It moves seamlessly from Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 2 to the first movement of the Cuban Dances, “Tamarindo Scherz-son”, a joint composition by Pepe Gavilondo and Yasel Muñoz based on the classic Cuban son rhythm. Willis channels her inner Don Lusher in the sultry “Danzón de la Medianoche”, Yuniet Lombida’s exquisite evocation of a big-band trombone solo, before launching Wilma Alba Cal’s plaintive “Guaguancó Sencillo” with a Mahlerian horn solo. The party continues with two tributes to their soloist, Jorge Aragon’s delicious “Un Bolero para Sarah” and “Sarahchá” by Lombida and Ernesto Oliva, complete with castanets and chorus, and closes with Oliva’s “¡Ay Comay! Un Changüí pa’Sari”, a veritable banquet of bold tunes and catchy cross-rhythms.