Astor Piazzolla, who died recently, was what Lancastrians would call a 'one-lot': a self-taught composer whose idols were Stravinsky, Bartok and Stan Kenton, leader of night-club and tango bands, a bandoneonist from the age of eight, and champion of the tango and its close relative the milonga as art-forms. Many were the influences on his compositional style—South American (predominantly Argentine) popular music, bossa nova, jazz, ragtime and European art music, and it may have been his year of study with Nadia Boulanger (1953–4) which helped him to reconcile them in forming his own very recognizable style. Whatever it was she taught him it was not the discipline of selective pruning, for many of his movements come close to (or succeed in) outstaying the welcome for their material. That said, his music has become widely popular (albeit too late for the accolade of inclusion in the current Grove), with its kaleidoscope of attractive ideas and, as in ''Triston'' (one of the Five Pieces for guitar), its plaintive expression of saudade. Flautists in search of twentieth-century solo music that would speak alluringly to an audience could do worse than investigate the six Etudes tanguistiques, selecting from them rather than venturing their 23-minute entirety. Helasvuo and Savijoki are Finns, about as far removed from Piazzolla's Argentina as one can get, but they grasp and project the spirit of this music no less infectiously for that. The recording is high-quality. One small criticism: 23 minutes of solo flute is not the most effective way to finish a 63-minute programme; guitar solos, flute solos and finally the duo Suite would perhaps have been better.'