'Beautiful playing on a lovely, mellow-sounding guitar by master guitarist Enea Leone' (Fanfare). The Italian guitarist Enea Leone has made several critically acclaimed recordings for Brilliant Classics, in repertoire ranging from first complete recordings of the studies by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Fernando Sor, to more popular repertoire from Argentina and from the catalog of Sergio Leone, with the Leone album attracting an LP reissue.

For his latest album, Leone stays in the popular vein, with classic tracks by Astor Piazzolla, in solo guitar arrangements mostly made by Leone himself. Adiós Nonino, Milonga del Ángel, Oblivion, and Libertango – these are just some of the tangos featured on the new album, which makes a perfect introduction to the melancholy art of Piazzolla, as balladeer and musical poet of 20th-century Argentina.

The sound of the modern tango is defined by the bandoneon, an instrument brought to Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 20th century by German immigrants, possibly sailors. The instrument invested the existing genre with a new potential for expressing deep, passionate feelings. In 1950, a brilliant young bandoneon player called Astor Piazzolla left Buenos Aires for Paris, where he went to study classical composition with Nadia Boulanger. Having also grown up in the US, he mixed elements of tango with both jazz and with forms and harmonies borrowed from the sphere of classical music, thereby creating what he called Tango Nuevo.

Argentine musicians and audiences were slow to embrace Piazzolla's new idiom, which caught on much more rapidly abroad. The emotional and technical complexity of these tangos made them easier to listen to than to dance to. However, once Tango Nuevo became almost ubiquitous elsewhere, Piazzolla was feted back at home as a master of Argentine music. The strength of his melodies has outlived him, most especially in their suitability for transcription to other instruments, such as violin and guitar. Leone has made these transcriptions specifically for the new album, which should win new fans both for him and for the subtle art of Piazzolla.