This is the third Piazzolla album by the Isabelle van Keulen Ensemble. As with the previous entries, the players are at their most engaging in the lyrical pieces and passages. I’m quite taken with the vein of bittersweet melancholy they find in the Poema valseado (from Maria de Buenos Aires), for instance, particularly as it’s unlike the composer’s own breezy accounts. Their leisurely, lilting tempo plays a part, certainly, but it’s van Keulen’s husky tone and expressive slipping and sliding that evoke the heady atmosphere of doomed romance. She tugs even harder on one’s heartstrings in the Introducción al ángel and Milonga del ángel, savouring the ache in every dissonant clash with Christian Gerber’s slithering bandoneón part.

In faster selections, however, the ensemble often plays it safe. Fuga y misterio lacks urgency – that uneasy, adrenalin-laced feeling one gets in the composer’s performances. The Allegro tangabile is also too tame. Piazzolla’s version conjures a chaotic Buenos Aires street scene; van Keulen’s group give us politely cheerful bustle. In La Camorra I, their sound is a marvellous kaleidoscope of vivid colour but their movements feel stiff. ‘I wanted tango swing, not jazz swing or contemporary music swing’, Piazzolla once said. Listen to his swaggering, gritty Nonesuch recording of this work and you get a sense of what he meant.

Am I being too critical? If so, it’s because the van Keulen Ensemble have set the bar so high, and so much of what’s here is compelling and freshly thought. In the frantic Muerte del ángel, for example, they show they’ve got that ‘tango swing’ while simultaneously illuminating facets of the music that are normally overlooked; van Keulen makes the jagged melody weep and wail like an inconsolable mourner. And with Challenge Classics’ up-close, almost tactile recorded sound, it’s all right in your face, just as it should be.