Zsófia Boros: El último aliento
ECM New Series

El último aliento, Zsófia Boros's third recording for ECM's New Series, presents the Vienna-based Hungarian classical guitarist performing two different sets of music, six pieces by French composer Mathias Duplessy and five contemporary Argentinean compositions by Joaquín Alem, Quique Sinesi, Carlos Moscardini, and Alberto Ginastera. Chances are, however, that listeners will less come away from the recording fixated on that detail than Boros's mesmerizing artistry. To spend forty minutes in her company is an absolute pleasure when her playing is so totally rewarding.

In featuring Boros unaccompanied, the recording, laid down at Lugano's Auditorio Stelio Molo, captures with pristine clarity every nuance of her playing and her delicate, graceful touch. Phrasing, pacing, and tone are thoughtfully considered in the eleven performances, and concision adds to the recording's appeal when only two push past the five-minute mark.

Her choice of selections is inspired too, something evident early on when Boros included on her 2013 debut album En otra parte and 2016 follow-up Local Objects pieces by Ralph Towner, Leo Brouwer, Egberto Gismonti, and Al DiMeloa. That sophomore effort anticipated El último aliento, by the way, in opening with Duplessy's “Nocturne”—a gesture that's repeated on the new release when it's initiated with the French composer's “De rêve et de pluie.” Suffused with romantic longing, the music captivates the moment Boros underlays sombre melodic statements with swirls of precisely executed fingerpicking. The hush she brings the music to as it approaches its end is also one of many exquisite things about the performance. With respect to other Duplessy pieces, the melancholy lyricism of “Le secret d'Hiroshigé” and Boros's fleet fingerpicking in “Perle de Rosée” make them equally compelling inclusions. Whereas an air of mystery pervades “Le labyrinthe de Vermeer,”“Berceuse” beguiles with an understated expression of joy.

Boros isn't averse to treating the guitar innovatively. For Sinesi's “El abrazo,” she strapped a rubber band around its strings to help mute the instrument as her children slept, and the alteration does much to amplify the tenderness of a composition that in moments feels on the verge of a whisper. For Sinesi's “Tormenta de ilusión,” Boros switches to the ten-string ronroco, the instrument audibly different from her other guitar in tone but not so much that the change is jarring. In its gently breezy sway, Ginastera's “Milonga” naturally draws from tango, albeit subtly, and Morscardini's transporting title composition ends the release as memorably as it begins. Many of the eleven performances are pitched at the level of a hush, yet they're nevertheless spellbinding when presented by an artist so in command of her instrument.

July 2023