When he died in 1992, Astor Piazzolla left a huge legacy of studio and live records, but it was a decade until his reputation began to grow internationally. The series of Piazzolla discs begun in 1996 by violinist Gidon Kremer played a major part; they demonstrated that Piazzolla's music could thrive outside the context of the Argentinian culture that formed it, and that international musicians could perform it very effectively. Here are the six Piazzolla albums that Kremer made up to 2001, including the "tango opera" Maria de Buenos Aires, and the Eight Seasons, which interleaves Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Piazzolla's Buenos Aires equivalents. His performances, whether with quartet or the strings of the Kremerata Baltica, are impeccably stylish; every instrumental effect is scrupulously reproduced. But, despite their missionary zeal, they now seem just too sanitised; earthiness and pungency are equally vital ingredients of Piazzolla's music as musical sophistication and wit.