Despite the boundaries between classical and popular music becoming increasingly blurred, there’s always been a market for serious music that partakes of popular elements while wearing the ‘classical’ tag lightly. Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s Beatles homage Beatlerianas (1986/2009) and Uruguayan composer Miguel del Aguila’s jazzy Latin dance Presto II (1988/1996), which pokes fun at the classical Viennese string quartet, are surely two such works.

Then there are more ostensibly classical works that draw heavily on the rhythms and melodies of indigenous folk music; two such are Brouwer’s Afro-Cuban-flavoured Quintet for guitar and string quartet (1957) and Mexican composer Javier Álvarez’s hypnotic ‘one-movement moto perpetuum’, Metro Chabacano (1988).

Formed in 2008, the Santiago Quartet, which includes two of the founding members of Cuarteto Genesis, specialises in the music of Latin America. Here it is joined by young UK-based Cuban guitarist Ahmed Dickinson Cárdenas. Judging from the obvious chemistry between the musicians, the live concerts which preceded the recording of this CD must have been really something.

There’s as much a sense of fun in the Brouwer quintet as there is in the del Aguila, and as much bite and precision in the playing, while the performers imbue Beatles classics such as ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Penny Lane’ in Brouwer’s wonderful arrangements with genuine warmth rather than the oft-heard ersatz reverence – and here Dickinson Cárdenas’s sweet, rounded tone and sensitive phrasing really come to the fore. The superbly crafted Metro Chabacano, stylishly performed, makes an ideal end to an enjoyable disc that offers some respite from the heavy stuff without sacrificing artistry.