Robert Schumann, the American Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winner Caroline Shaw and Shostakovich may not seem obvious string quartet bedfellows, but the focus of the Calidore Quartet’s thought-provoking programme is ‘to explore the innate human drive for communication’. In all three works there is some element of encoding or misdirection of true feelings, whether in the doubt-laden Adagio molto of Schumann’s otherwise sunlit Third Quartet, or Shostakovich’s Ninth with its web of references to Jewish music, including klezmer, and – in the central Allegretto – Rossini.

Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays (2017-18) lie at the epicentre of the Calidore’s focus on communication; they were composed as a direct response to the unrest following President Trump’s election in 2016, and the use of language and social media to ‘spread confusion and misinformation’. In the first, ‘Nimrod’ (no Elgarian nobility here), Shaw uses the example of the Tower of Babel’s legendary founder to weave a compelling fantasia on the fragmentation of language (whether spoken or musical), while the central ‘Echo’ toys with several manifestations of the name, from an echo chamber to a programming language. Computing overshadows the final essay, too, since ‘Ruby’ is not just a gemstone but an influential Japanese object-oriented programming language. Ironically, it is the least effective part of the triptych.

The Calidore’s performances are as sharp (I don’t mean their intonation!) as the intelligence of their concept. The Schumann is quite beautifully rendered, and if not quite the equal of the Zehetmair’s or Doric’s accounts, full of life yet exploratory in the Adagio molto. The quartet are fully equal to Shaw’s at times dislocated textures, drawing the threads together convincingly as the composer intended. They are alert to Shostakovich’s inner intricacies, too, and if this is not the first-choice account (go to the Borodin or Emerson for that) it is still very competitive, and in the context of the album, fascinating. Signum’s sound is beautifully clear and spacious.