Piazzolla 2021

French prodigy Louise Jallu took an interest in tango when she was five and has been playing virtuoso bandoneón since her teens. At the ripe old age of 26, she brings experience as well as youthful energy to covers of Astor Piazzolla standards. ‘Oblivion’, ‘Soledad’, ‘Adiós Nonino’ and ‘Libertango’ are given assertive treatments that, thanks to bold arrangements by Jallu in collaboration with Bernard Cavanna, add novel twists and turns to familiar melodies. This reworking of ‘Libertango’, for instance, has blockbuster-style police sirens and lays the famous zigzagging lead line over a hefty slab of dissonance. Other tracks foreground free-form strings or a pounding piano.

The almost unreadably pretentious sleevenotes do that French thing of circling forever around a basic concept but the actual idea, that respect rather than reverence and spirit over letter make for the best cover versions, is valid. Jallu takes the moodiness and melodrama of Piazzolla's tango and makes it cerebral, colder and less balletic – more contemporary, if you accept the world is a gloomy and unromantic place these days. She's joined by Mathias Lévy (guitar, violin), Marc Benham (Fender Rhodes) and Alexandre Perrot (double bass). Pianist Gustavo Beytelmann, and cornettist Médéric Collignon round off the team. This is an ensemble record, lacking Piazzolla's authority or dynamism, but is nonetheless a worthy homage.