Piazzolla originally composed his Histoire du tango for flute and guitar but it’s just as frequently taken up by violinists – and for good reason. The violin is intimately tied to the tango as it was popularised through radio and recordings (try to hear Julio de Caro, for example, whose stylish playing is well documented on disc), and it’s also capable of the kind of tonal bite that became essential to the genre. Yet, as Piazzolla reminds us in his programme note for his Histoire (whose four movements trace the tango’s development), the dance form originated in the brothels of Buenos Aires, where it was played on flute and guitar. Lisa Friend gives us an apt whiff of sensuality in the opening ‘Bordello, 1900’, while maintaining the requisite fin de siècle decorum. Some might feel that the intense strain of melancholy and improvisatory spirit Craig Ogden finds in the guitar part of ‘Café, 1930’ is too modern; I find it quite affecting. The other movements, however, need far more grit and toughness. Not many flautists get it right, mind you, but Cécile Daroux does (Harmonia Mundi, 12/99).

The remainder of the programme is a pleasantly varied mix of lyrical, mostly well-known miniatures, with Friend accompanied alternately by Ogden and the Aquarelle Guitar Quartet. Bellinati’s breezy Balão de Gude was the one work unfamiliar to me, and it’s a charmer – swingingly syncopated and harmonically sophisticated. Other highlights include an atmospheric reading of Ravel’s Pièce en forme de habanera, Shostakovich’s nostalgic Waltz (probably best known as the seventh movement of his Suite for Variety Orchestra), where the guitars sound like balalaikas, and the childlike simplicity Friend and Ogden bring to Poulenc’s Mouvements perpétuels. Only a slightly stiff Brahms Hungarian Dance and a soggy Fauré Pavane miss the mark. Still, a lovely recital, all in all, and very prettily recorded.