With all the talk in recent years about increasing the representation of Black and Latin artists in classical music, it should be noted that the Detroit-based Sphinx Organisation has been doing just that for more than a quarter of a century. Sphinx Virtuosi, the organisation’s flagship performing ensemble of 18 string players, has been performing around the US since 2004, including at Carnegie Hall. This is their debut recording, and it’s a knockout.

Aside from the Beethoven – a sizzling arrangement by Rubén Rengel of the finale of the Kreutzer Sonata that closes the programme with an extended adrenalin rush – all the other composers represented here are Black or Latin, like the performers themselves. Michael Abels’s Global Warming (1990) was composed following the fall of the Berlin Wall (the title refers to the warming of international relations rather than to climate change) and blends music from seemingly disparate cultures. Aldemaro Romero’s ‘Fuga con Pajarillo’ (from his 1976 Suite for Strings) applies a popular Venezuelan dance rhythm to fugal form, while the complex metre of Ricardo Herz’s Sísifo na cidade grande (‘Sisyphus in the Big City’, 1978) – Herz employs the highly unusual time signature of 25/16 – evokes the playing of Afro-Brazilian maracatu ensembles.

Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions (2022) begins with an elegy for Emmett Till (lynched at the age of 14) and the victims of the 2022 shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and concludes with an urgent yet songful call for unity where, thanks to the composer’s craftsmanship, the generous flow of ideas progresses with a real sense of inevitability. Divided (2020) is Jessie Montgomery’s response to the sense of helplessness felt in ‘a world that seems to be in constant crisis’. Cast as a compact cello concerto – the solo part is brilliantly negotiated here by principal cellist Tommy Mesa – much of it conveys a mood of anguished rumination, although the music becomes increasingly combative in its second half.

Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds (2019), scored for solo violin, is played fearlessly by 15-year-old Amaryn Olmeda. Inspired by the life of African American artist Bill Traylor, who was born into slavery in the 1850s and lived through the Great Migration, the music brings together Bachian four-string polyphony, Spirituals and the blues. Sandwiched between Simon’s solo piece and Montgomery’s concise yet intricately detailed concerto, the Sphinx Virtuosi offer a few minutes’ solace with a tender account of the slow movement from Florence Price’s A minor String Quartet (1935) arranged by bassist Jonathan Colbert.

The programme offers a satisfyingly wide range of styles, and the ensemble’s performances are as consistently polished as they are passionate. Kudos to DG for seizing the opportunity to widen the Sphinx Virtuosi’s audience and the Sphinx Organisation’s invaluable continuing achievements.