Ástor Piazzolla’s Bandoneón Concerto has been well-served on record, most notably by the composer himself in a swaggering 1987 account on Nonesuch. A similarly trenchant performance by French accordionist/composer Richard Galliano made a decade later is nearly as fine (Dreyfus/BMG). Galliano included his own Concerto Opale for accordion, closely modelled on Piazzolla’s work, and a selection of his charmingly sentimental miniatures on his recording. Now here’s Gwen Cresens, revisiting Galliano’s programme by offering both the Piazzolla and Galliano concertos (played on bandoneón and accordion, respectively, as Galliano did), and his own mix of shorter works.

Cresens plays the Piazzolla Concerto with tremendous rhythmic élan. I admire how tautly he holds together the lyrical passages while still sounding improvisatory, and also how sensitive he and the Venezuelan conductor Diego Matheuz are to the music’s textural variety. Try the passage at 4'56" in the slow movement, where the bandoneón and orchestra’s pulsing staccato suggests raindrops, heightening the melancholy atmosphere. The Galliano Concerto is episodic and sometimes gets stuck in a groove. Galliano tears through the outer movements to electrifying effect in his recording. Cresens is less urgent but, again, makes the most of the motoric rhythms, and lingers more affectionately in the nostalgically bittersweet Moderato malinconico.

The shorter pieces are a curious lot. Cresens prefaces the Granados and Albéniz with a flamenco-inflected prelude of his own to create an evocative suite. His enigmatically titled Nobody Likes an Angry Bunny is introduced by aching harmonies and continues with a touching, Piazzolla-esque milonga but the denouement is saccharine. And while Cresens makes the most of Piazzolla’s conversational Pedro y Pedro, his arrangement of Oblivion is too garishly coloured. Galliano plays Oblivion on his concerto disc, too, but in a version much closer to the sepia-toned spirit of the original. Still, this is a gratifying programme overall, and the recorded sound is sparklingly clear.