James Crabb is a musical magician, taking the ever-unfashionable accordion into new and unlikely places, through bespoke arrangements of a spectrum of pieces which brim with wit and inventiveness. This lunchtime concert with violinist Anthony Marwood was a sheer joy, as they together traversed a range of style and tone, richly entertaining a very decent Bank Holiday crowd in the Wigmore Hall.

Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis hasn’t made large waves this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is because her appeal has partly been rooted in Latin communities across the US and, indeed, Central and South America. Last year her third album, Red Moon in Venus, reached the Top 5 of the US album charts. At the time she said she already had her next album ready, a Spanish language affair. This is it and it’s a slightly feistier creature than its woozily narcotic predecessor.

One of the many theatrical casualties of Omicron in December was the official UK opening of Moulin Rouge!, the stage version of Baz Luhrmann’s indelible 2001 film that has already racked up 10 Tony Awards for its 2019 Broadway production (albeit in a depleted season).

Sverre Indris Joner: Con cierto toque de tango Henning Kraggerud (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Sverre Indris Joner, with Tango for 3 (Lawo Classics)

If there’s a downside to the resurgence of vinyl, it’s that all that’s left in most charity shops these days is James Galway and his cursed flute and Max Bygraves medley albums. Then again, there’s always new stuff coming in so it’s down to everybody to get in there quick, before the local record shops hoover up all the gems. And there it is. Many small towns now have local record shops again. That’s surely something to celebrate.

Watching tango dancers Gisela Galeassi and Nikito Cornejo own the apron of the stage during the second half of m¡longa, the brain finds it difficult to process what the eyes are seeing. The pair seem to be one writhing, dark-toned dervish of jutting, sensual, passionate movement. Back and forth they go, he spinning her round his body like a silk scarf, fluid as mercury; her feet attacking the stage, staccato, kicking out, kicking down, so fast it really is the proverbial blur. Nigh on two hours of tango with a 20-minute interval might sound like too much, but with only the smallest of lulls in interest, this show grips, from start to finish.

Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s international breakthrough was his award-winning 2008 collaboration, Sutra, with the artist Anthony Gormley and the Shaolin monks. He has since become a leading choreographer, always willing to explore global influences and sources. He’s revelled in the Hispanic before on the flamenco-themed Dunas, with Spanish dancer María Pagés but m¡longa is as very different affair, unwrapping the Argentinian tango and opening it out to a kind of visual concept album, based around six couples, coming together and apart, in different moods, in what we may imagine to be a Buenos Aires cityscape of streets, cafés and nightclubs.

The bandoneon-led sound of tango is an easy delight

As well as dancers, m¡longa utilises film and visuals to potent effect. There is a wonderful scene where a dancer stands with his back to us manipulating a giant screen of photos via gesture, like Tom Cruise in the film Minority Report. And another where dancers rush about trying to keep up with landscapes speeding past behind them, like Hollywood actors at the dawn of cinema comedy. On one occasion these visuals precede the show’s most enjoyable moment of outright clowning, when brightly auburn-haired dancer Vivana D’Attoma plays a woozy drunk, trying to pull the suavely dismissive, evening wear-clad Gabriel Bordon. Her floppy moves, precisely estimated, are a well-portrayed twist on the rest.

Some set pieces are isolated moments, such as the somehow shocking dance wherein Esther Garabali and Martin Epherra act out, via tango of course, an explosive relationship, bordering on the violent, or a sequence where three male dancers perform a particularly frantic, energetic routine. Other themes, however, run throughout, interspersed with the rest of the action. Particularly notable is the relationship between the couple played by Silvina Cortés and Damien Fournier who, often surrounded by the ensemble as an intrusive hubbub of night world activity, find each other, have a one-night stand, go their separate ways, and, perhaps, find one another again.

There's a minimum of props – a flag, a few chairs – and music plays a key role. The bandoneon-led sound of tango is an easy delight anyway, and composer Szymon Brzóska’s interpretation of it via a five-piece musical group, stage right, is well-estimated, bursting with life where required but also dropping to loose downtempo arrangements suitable for the more interpretive modern dances. M¡longa is an eyeful, and holds the attention with vim, vitality and sheer hard-practiced skill.

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Overleaf: Watch trailer for Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui m¡longa

Grainger: Works for Large Chorus and Orchestra Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Sir Andrew Davis (Chandos)

Cesaria Evora was one of the great singers, her lived-in voice and poignant, heart-wrenching music affecting nearly all who heard it. She had been in poor health after a heart attack in 2008 and a stroke last year, and died on the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde where she was born. I had the honour and pleasure of meeting her in Lisbon in 2001, on the occasion of the release of one of her best albums, São Vicente Di Longe. She seemed hugely modest and rather amazed at the fact that she had become a global star.

This was a programme born for marketing cliché: banish the winter blues by bathing in Latin American/Iberian warmth. And it turned out to be true, by virtue of an unexpected watershed. How did the BBC Symphony strings manage to be first among the London orchestras to slip into something truly sensual, whether tangoing with an Argentinian bandoneónist - "A what?" you may ask, and I'll tell you shortly - or dancing malagueñas with a Spanish pianist? Was it the after-effect of the John Wilson Hollywood treatment last Sunday, or just sheer joy in welcoming back the high, bright style of conductor Josep Pons?

The first phrase of the first piece by Georges Enescu - silken, expressive, rounded, breathed to perfection - established a very good case for Håkan Hardenberger being the greatest living trumpeter. The rest of his Wigmore Hall recital established a pretty equally watertight case against.