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What is intriguing about the Piazzolla performance by Trio de l’Île on a new Divine Art CD is not the repertoire – the players offer, yes, Las cuatro estaciones porteñas – but the arrangement of the Piazzolla material, and the ways in which it contrasts with the other two pieces on the disc, which will almost certainly be wholly unknown to most audiences. The Piazzolla has an especially strong flavor of the concert hall in this arrangement and in this trio’s performance: the dance rhythms are certainly there and are emphasized as appropriate, but much of the emphasis is on tonal warmth and the sort of “conversational” balance that sounds so good in classical chamber music.

The musical flow rather than its rhythmic changes gets the emphasis here, and the progression through the year is highlighted by placing the seasons in the same order in which Vivaldi offered them. Thus, the arrangement, by J. Bragato, is not at all true to Piazzolla’s intentions – and the work itself is incorrectly stated on the package to date to 1960. But if the Trio de l’Île performance is looked at as a rethinking and reinterpretation of Piazzolla’s music and a pleasant aural journey, it is quite successful on those terms. And coupling the Argentinian material, however much it may be modified, with two works by Armenian composers, is an interesting decision.

The 1952 Trio for piano, violin and cello by Arno Babadjanian (1921-1983) is the same length as the Piazzolla work (albeit in three movements) and has considerable expressiveness: the first movement dwells on the strings’ lower ranges to fine effect; the second features a particularly beautiful melody first heard very high on the violin and then winningly disposed among the three instruments; and the finale sweeps away the emotional heft of the earlier movements with panache in a burst of rhythmically attractive thematic material that sounds folklike even though it is not drawn directly from Armenia’s folk music.

Also on the disc is the 1945 Piano Trio by Gayané Chebotaryan (1918-1998), a short work (eight-and-a-half minutes) that is folk-inspired. Its string pizzicati and dancelike piano elements, plus some strongly emotive violin lines, convey its mood effectively, and its character comes through very well indeed in this performance. Although the disc will not be anyone’s first choice for the Piazzolla material, which is inauthentic despite its fine sound, the CD presents a good opportunity for listeners to explore 20^th-century piano trios from Armenia and to think about ways in which their expressiveness fits, or does not fit, with Argentinian material from the same time period.