Album: Artemis Quartet with Jaques Ammon, The Piazzolla Project, (Virgin Classics)

The Artemis Quartet cellist Eckart Runge has been fascinated by the tango music of Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla since the mid-1980s, discerning in it a blend of joy and melancholy.

Over the past decade, he has collaborated with the Chilean pianist Jacques Ammon as the tango duo Celloproject, a pairing that has now been expanded to involve Runge's Artemis bandmates for these chamber pieces by Piazzolla. "Estaciones Porteñas", a vivid portrait of the four seasons as experienced in Buenos Aires, may prove to be his most enduring composition, duly rendered with restrained elan here.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Fuga y Misterio', 'Estaciones Porteñas'