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Shake it up, Mozart

The maestro returns with a dance beat

By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
March 14th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Crossover goes global with this mix of European classicists and Cuban percussionists.
Mozart Meets Cuba brings together two incongruous styles of music, separated by two continents and roughly 200 years. But, in essence, it’s the best of both worlds.
In Mozart’s day, drums and percussion were considered taboo for orchestral music. This antipathy was an extension of the Christian Middle Ages, when the drum signified the presence of the devil. Mozart was also the equivalent of a Euro pop star and the best of his era, unrivaled even today. So it seems natural that classical musicians would ask themselves what Mozart would have done not only with drums and percussion, but, in our times, the polyrhythmic drums and percussion of Cuba, which is among the best in the world.
The classically trained German musicians of Mozart Meets Cuba — pianist Tobias  Forster, bass player Kilian Forster and drummer Tim Hahn — had already formed a crossover group combining classical with jazz, calling themselves the Klazz Brothers, a name derived from the fusion of KLAssik JaZZ. Then, in 1999, the trio met Afro-Cuban percussionists Elio Rodriguez Luis and Alexis Herrera Estevez in Havana.
Since that time, the musicians haven’t had a rest. The Klazz Brothers & Cuba Percussion has been a hit, playing prestigious classical concert halls throughout Europe as well as the Taipei National Theatre, and making numerous TV appearances.
For its debut in Prague, the group won’t be playing a renowned classical hall. Instead, it will be playing the nightclub Akropolis, though with good reason. “In almost every show people start to dance,” says Forster. “They even do it in opera houses, where it is, of course, very unusual during a pure classical performance.”
Most of the songs are slight Latin jazz reinterpretations of classics like “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” with the updated name “Bomba de la noche,” or “Fantasie C-Moll,” changed to “Son de Mozart.” “Afrolero” is a smooth version of “Klavierkonzert nr. 21.” And “Don Muerte,” its version of “Don Giovanni,” sounds like Ennio Morricone’s music from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.
There are also songs with Cuban music as the base. As Forster explains, “ ‘Hasta la vista’ was the opposite way of arranging our songs; in this case it’s Cuba meets Mozart, a famous Cuban melody for which we had to find an appropriate Mozart ‘original.’ Another song, ‘Don Cajon,’ is just a short piece of contemporary music which could have been composed by Mozart if he had had the chance to be influenced by Stockhausen.” 
Mozart Meets Cuba

When: Tuesday, March 20, at 7:30
Where: Palác Akropolis
Tickets: 370 Kč through Ticketpro and at the venue

Mozart Meets Cuba is just one project of this group of musicians. According to Forster, “We also have different programs and CDs on which we feature a lot of the other famous composers, like Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Bizet and more.”
But matching Mozart with Cuban percussion is the main project.
“Mozart wrote so many world-famous, good melodies that we just had to do it,” says Forster. “Besides, what would Mozart’s big birthday party in 2006 have been without our contribution to it? There was maybe the 50,000th performance of The Magic Flute since Mozart composed it. But there’s never been Mozart’s Cuban roots onstage.”
The unique hybrid has been a hit on the island as well, according to Forster. “We had just one concert in Havana, and the reaction was overwhelming,” he says. “For Cuban people, music is very essential in their daily life; you can see people dancing in front of a shop, for example. In our concert, it took only a few moments, and they started to dance and joined us clapping. In Europe, people are more introverted; it takes longer to stand up from the chairs. But this does not mean that Europeans don’t like it so much. They just have a different history and way of listening to a concert.”
Mozart Meets Cuba doesn’t make Mozart’s remarkable music any better after all these years, and it doesn’t necessarily bring a touch of class to the equally sublime world of Cuban percussion. However, two such popular forms of music were bound to intersect at some point, and the synthesis provides an appropriate aftermath to the Mozart anniversary year in Prague.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (14/03/2007):

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