This is a portrait of the legendary Paraguayan guitarist and composer Agustín Barrios (1885-1944) with a difference: his music, and some of his arrangements, impeccably performed by Thibaut Garcia; his poetry, read by Paraguayan musician and poet Orlando Rojas; and, finally, Barrios played by Barrios. Garcia thinks of Barrios as ‘the Chopin of the guitar’, which I don’t really get – Francisco Tárrega, for sure, but not Barrios, whose music is much more distinctive, unique even. Anyway, such differences of opinion are irrelevant when the playing is this good.

The rippling, hypnotic tremolo of Un sueño en la floresta sweeps us into a romantic world of songs without words, of dances and preludes, of stories and portraits. But the Portuguese word ‘saudade’ (a kind of melancholy nostalgia) appears in two titles: Choro da saudade and La catedral’s ‘Preludio saudade’. It’s this melancholy mood that persists, in varying degrees, throughout the entire album. Thanks mostly to Barrios’s haunting music (even at its most joyful, such as the Maxixe); but thanks also to Garcia’s sensitive, intuitive interpretations, best savoured in the exquisite pianissimos of Julia Florida and Barrios’s arrangement of Chopin’s Prelude in C minor.

It’s worth noting that Garcia had already recorded, quite marvellously, La catedral for his album ‘Bach Inspirations’ and ‘since [his] view of it hasn’t changed’, it’s included again here ‘because it just has to feature on any Barrios album’. Rojas reads Barrios’s ‘Bohemio’ accompanied by Garcia’s rendition of Vidalita; elsewhere, he reads Barrios’s ‘Profesión de fé’ unaccompanied. There are no translations but Rojas’s quietly intense declamations and the musicality of the language itself are so evocative that it matters little.

That Barrios himself should be allowed to say a spectral goodbye with his 1928 recording of Caazapá is a lovely touch. ‘El Bohemio’ is another fine release from a young guitarist who just keeps getting better and better. It’s more than worthy of sitting alongside classic Barrios albums such as John Williams’s ‘The Great Paraguayan’ (Sony, 9/95) and David Russell’s selection (Telarc, 1/96).