El último aliento Works by Joaquín Alem, Mathias Duplessy, Ginastera, Carlos Moscardini and Quique Sinesi Zsófia Boros (guitar) ECM 485 8302 37:20 mins
In her third solo album for ECM, Hungarian guitarist Zsófia Boros continues her exploration of contemporary repertoire off the beaten track. Interweaving miniatures by French composer Mathias Duplessy (b1972) and four Argentinian peers, this quietly emotive mix finds common ground in bittersweet harmonies, plangent melodies and fluid, sometimes sultry, rhythms. The title El último aliento is taken from the final piece by Carlos Moscardini (b1959) and roughly translates as ‘the last breath’. With understated intensity it neatly summarises the whole, which Boros delivers with improvisatory calm just the right side of repose.
Rippling arpeggios and tremolos abound. While Joaquín Alem (b1975) echoes with tamboura the dark-light spaciousness of Duplessy’s opening De rêve et de pluie, Alberto Ginastera (1916-83) – the sole non-living composer here – brings pensive nobility in a brief Milonga. Of the Frenchman, perhaps most alluring is Le labyrinthe de Vermeer with its loping rhythms and suggestive major-minor shifts.
But the highlights come courtesy of unexpected textures in two works by Quique Sinesi (b1960): in El abrazo, Boros ingeniously mutes the strings with an elastic band, then later switches to the ten-string Andean ronroco for Tormenta de ilusión to striking effect.
Steph Power