Fung Chern Hwei (Fung is the family name, Chern Hwei his forename), Gregor Huebner, Sunjay Jayaram and Jeremy Harman are the Sirius Quartet, and this marvellous, spiritually inclined album – the third I have encountered of theirs (they have recorded more) – displays their talents as composers as well as performers. There are several expressive threads running through the programme, including themes of loss, memory and anger.

Anger is heard most clearly in the largest work here, though still relatively brief – Huebner’s Seventh (and most recent) Quartet, Rage. Its three movements were inspired, respectively, by lockdown and Black Lives Matter (the opening ‘Shut It Down’ featuring a virtuoso violin solo at its centre), resistance to oppression, specifically in Belarus, in the contemplative central span (based on Arseneva’s 1943 anthem Magutny Bozha), and outrage at the destruction of Aleppo in the finale (longer than the other movements combined). Chant pour l’ile Gorée, by contrast, commemorates the infamous ‘Gate of No Return’ for slaves transported to the plantations of the Americas.

There is an edginess to Harman’s Echo Chambers, a vibrant, entertaining toccata taking its driving, aggressive air from social media toxicity and misinformation, while At Sea (Scatter the Ashes) is an elegy to his jazz-guitarist father. Here, the cello imitates the guitar, while the others emulate the sounds of the ocean. Jayaram’s Sahasranamam, based on a prayer to Vishnu, is more vivacious, a cosmic dance speaking ‘to the beyond’. It feels like the slow movement of a larger work, unlike You Can’t Get Them Back, an elegy for a viola-playing colleague ‘who passed away too soon’. Fung’s Between Impulses and Farewell, Horatio similarly celebrate departed friends, though the close of the latter most movingly seems to utter an unspoken ‘I miss you, dear friend’.

Prayer of Heart and Mind is an arrangement of a Belarusian chant, concluding the programme in hope and comfort. The performances are terrific, unsurprisingly, the intimate recording making the quartet sound as if they are playing just for you, in your front room. Recommended.