Like some mid-20th century German orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra has a string quartet drawn from its principal players – smartly abbreviated SBSQ in this debut disc that has the considerable strengths and minor limitations of the orchestra’s first Beethoven disc. Though the players sometimes make expressive points through the quality of their sound, prettiness is not their priority. Somewhat in the spirit of the vintage Juilliard Quartet, SBSQ is more interested in the music’s inner workings behind the sound, and with Ginastera, there’s much of that to be heard.

Though the disc notes mention a guitar-influenced ‘gaucho chord’ in the Ginastera quartet, I hear a rigorously wrought piece whose tightly packed first movement clearly generates the content of the following three – and with a dazzling level of invention revealed by the performance on multiple levels. This isn’t the only mainstream-label recording of the piece out there (or the only Ginastera quartet worth investigating) but it’s among the most compelling.

The Dvořák has a big-boned swagger that suits the music’s Americana vigour, though nostalgic reflection almost goes missing. It’s a young person’s performance. The limitation of life experience is more strongly felt in the Shostakovich quartet. One doesn’t need to have lived through Stalinist Russia to lay claim to the piece; there’s plenty of integrity apart from the music’s sub-textual protest of that era’s dictatorial world. But the passionate objectivity of the SBSQ can only go so far.

The inward devastation of the ending, for example, is simply quiet. The ominous musical knocks at the door are clean and brusque but little more, and don’t evolve much on repeated statements. Dance passages are engaging but dark undertones are minimal. Return to Shostakovich-era recordings by the Beethoven Quartet and the Borodin Quartet and hear how the more strictly organised the music becomes, the more it projects a world falling apart.