Guitarist Zsófia Boros: More of the Same?

Hungarian guitarist Zsófia Boros (photograph by Maria Frodl, courtesy of ECM Records)

I first became aware of Hungarian guitarist Zsófia Boros when her debut album for ECM New Series, En otra parte, was released at the end of September of 2013. When I wrote about that album for Examiner.com, I concluded that it offered: “a quietly restrained account of music that tends to be given livelier interpretations.” Nevertheless, I was happy to encounter three tracks of music by the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, two of which offered separate interpretations of “Un dia de noviembre” (a day in November).

One week from today, ECM Series will release Boros’ latest (third) album, El último aliento (the last breath). This is the title of the last of the eleven tracks on the new release, composed by Carlos Moscardini, a guitarist and music professor currently based in Buenos Aires. As many probably expect, Amazon.com has created a Web page to process pre-orders for both physical and digital distribution.

Once again, subtlety tends to prevail across all of those eleven tracks. Six of them have been allocated to compositions by French composer Mathias Duplessy, whom I have not previously encountered in any setting. Indeed, the only composer familiar to me is Alberto Ginastera. Boros’ selection of his “Milonga” is consistent with her rhetoric of subtlety, but I would suggest that the music itself does not stand out the way many of the other selections in the Ginastera catalog do.

Having now given both of these albums side-by-side listening, I am afraid I have come to the conclusion that one is enough!