Just when you thought the pandemic’s musical fruits were all harvested … During the spring 2020 lockdown, Fenella Humphreys – already known for her solo violin performing and commissioning – gave a series of livestreamed solo performances from her flat, of repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the 21st century. Very quickly, she began to receive scores of new works to perform, often from young composers. She also created new arrangements of her own. Humphreys was hardly the only string player to be livestreaming from her living room, but what she was doing was, in creativity and adventurousness, a cut above the pack. ‘Prism’ now presents the best of what she was gifted, arranged or first discovered during this time, captured with vivid warmth by Dave Rowell, two years on (the sessions took place in 2022).

Stylistically and geographically, this is quite the odyssey, even just between the three representatives from the works gifted to her. The title-track, Michael Small’s Prism, takes the main melodic shapes of Paganini’s 24th Caprice and refracts them. Hot on its heels is Bethan Morgan-Williams’s One, Two, Bakerloo …, 43 seconds of minimalist, spikily hopping melodic metamorphosis. Later on, there are the four short movements of Cameron Biles-Liddell’s Contemplations, written very audibly under the dual inspiration of Baroque solo violin suites and the Welsh folk tradition, their long-lined song and extended-technique colour glowing under Humphreys’s fingertips, the bouncing Gigue’s double-stops sleekly rendered and the Nocturne quietly shimmering.

Indeed, Humphreys certainly knows how to spin multicoloured magic at the quietest end of the dynamic range, and how to harness silence. Caroline Shaw’s In manus tuas, based on a 16th-century motet by Thomas Tallis and originally for solo cello (appropriately, since Humphreys draws such wonderful mellow richness from her Guadagnini’s lower registers), is a luminous-toned masterclass in this; and its semi-sacred contemplation has already been beautifully set up by Humphreys’s own emotionally charged transcription of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, BWV565 – itself a magnificent piece of writing and playing, dovetailing into the sound world of the Solo Sonatas and Partitas while further stretching their polyphonic virtuosities (listen to her swirling double‑stops at 2'05").

Further treats? Humphreys’s arrangement of Schumann’s Träumerei coming long-breathed, achingly tenderly shaped and sweetly silvery of tone; or Peter Maxwell Davies’s Scotch-snappy A Last Postcard from Sanday, moving from dark wistfulness to impish optimism over its 1'52" running time.

I’ve cherry-picked for reviewing purposes, but when each piece moves to the next with such an organic, spell-holding flow, you’re missing out if you don’t listen end to end. Certainly that’s what I’ll now be doing myself. Because yes, my relationship with this album will not be ending with the filing of this review.