When Covid-19 hit the US hard in the first months of 2020 and lockdowns began to be imposed in the hardest-hit states, Yo-Yo Ma responded on Twitter with brief, consolatory musical offerings under the hashtag #songsofcomfort. This album takes that idea and wrangles it into a more polished form. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting the rough-hewn emotion and spontaneity of the Twitter posts to survive the translation to a scrupulously produced, high-profile record release. Yet if there’s little that sounds spontaneous here, the feeling of sincerity is never in question, and Ma and his frequent duo partner Kathryn Stott have managed to corral a collection of wide-ranging miniatures into something that feels closer to a recital than a compilation.

That said, I don’t think the overlay of sound effects Graham Fitkin applies to his two versions of the hymn Amazing Grace – a creaking ship beset by strong winds in the album’s prelude and crashing waves in the postlude – adds anything but theatrical distraction. That’s a pity, as the sonic tapestry he weaves through the overdubbing of solo cello parts evokes a longing, dreamlike atmosphere – rather like a modern take on English consort music for viols. And, as it turns out, dreamy wistfulness is one of the album’s unifying themes – not just in the selection of music itself but in the performances and arrangements as well.

William Arms Fisher’s version of ‘Goin’ Home’ (the opening section of the Largo from Dvořák’s New World Symphony), for example, reimagines this well-known excerpt as pure and slender chamber music. Ma’s way with Mariettas Lied from Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt may be a little too languid for some, but I like how its fragility suggests hearing the aria through the wrong side of a telescope, as it were. Solveig’s Song from Grieg’s Peer Gynt, on the other hand, is played with utter simplicity, and the delicate dance of its central section is marvellously feather-light. Ma and Stott revel in the graceful sentimentality of Poulenc’s ‘Les chemins de l’amour’, giving us salon music at its most exalted.

Other highlights include ‘Shenandoah’, where Caroline Shaw finds a wealth of complexities while preserving the simple character of the original folk song, and Stephen Hough’s reimagining of the popular Russian song ‘Moscow Nights’, which makes it seem that Rachmaninov wrote it. I found ‘Gracias a la vida’ surprisingly moving, thanks to Ma, who makes his tone weather-worn and in doing so touchingly evokes the earthiness of the Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, and similarly caught off guard by the intimacy both players bring to ‘Over the rainbow’. The latter number seems meant to be heard through earbuds, so it’s as if the musicians were whispering directly into your ears. All in all, this album is an unexpected pleasure.