The third instalment from the Houston-based Apollo Chamber Players’ project of commissioning and recording 20 new ‘folk music-inspired and multicultural works’ by the end of the decade introduces four excellent new string quartets and writes a new chapter in Navona’s commitment to the Cuban music industry. In fact, the label claims that Apollo’s recording of Arthur Gottschalk’s Imágenes de Cuba at Abdala Studios in Havana in January 2017 marked the first time an American chamber ensemble had recorded and performed in Cuba. And Gottschalk’s infectious work makes the perfect centrepiece, drawing on Cuban dance rhythms and attitudes alongside conflicting feelings of nostalgia, pride and sadness for its past, and shouts of ‘Cuba libre!’
