The Miró Quartet’s new album, ‘Home’, offers a discourse on the themes thrown up by the title: a nation’s people on the move, music born from the confines of a pandemic, and quartets that are in the DNA of the players.

The newly commissioned quartet by Kevin Puts (b1972) – which gives the album its title – is, like all this music, approachable and rewarding to spend time with. Over three tightly constructed movements, the writing reveals a generosity of spirit and warmth, the music reflecting the plight of a displaced Syrian people with ever-increasing urgency. The first movement is based on the ebb and flow of a rocking motif over a bass pedal, textures sifted then lightened and enriched. It wouldn’t be out of keeping to align the second movement, a scherzo in all but name, with Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, the rhythmic pulse and dazzling energy bleeding into the linked ‘Dangerously fast’ third movement, where the prevailing mood of anxiety is punctured by tormented high-pitched cries on violins. Expectations for future performances look most promising.

Caroline Shaw’s Microfictions was born from the safety of her small apartment in Manhattan, set against the covid lockdown. The composer took her inspiration from TR Darling’s Microfictions, ‘a daily series of short science fiction pieces’, each one told ‘within the character limit of a single Twitter post’. Working on Zoom with the Miró Quartet, she demonstrated some of the unique string techniques she was employing, creating her own musical equivalents, and writing her own prose ‘microfictions’, presenting them in a most beguiling fashion. The six short movements are composed with a craftsman’s eye for detail, colours and effects diligently applied, as in the sombre mood of the haunting final ‘The Mountains folded in …’. Prepare to be tickled pink by ‘The complete taxonomy …’, where Shaw references the artist Miró hearing a bird’s repetitious call, the clouds nodding ‘to the tempo of an undiscovered Mendelssohn song’. ‘Between the third and fourth …’ is a spoken interlude, where the second violin stands up and says hello to the audience, everyone grateful to know which movement they’re on! It’s a humorous touch brought off to perfection by narrator and player.

Both the Barber Quartet and George Walker’s Quartet No 1 house celebrated slow movements, the latter standing alone here. It was Walker’s loving tribute to his grandmother, a slave, his love for her reflected in this touching performance. With regard to the Barber, I suggest you forget about state funerals and movie soundtracks and engage with the real McCoy in this dynamic performance, where the Miró give full rein to Barber’s natural lyrical gifts while not holding back on the edgier, darker side of his genius. The Adagio steals in and holds the attention in a beautifully rendered performance. Arlen’s ‘Over the rainbow’ follows as if the most natural thing in the world. There’s nothing fancy about William Ryden’s arrangement, verse included, the shimmering codicil finely judged and played con amore. Did I miss the vocal? Not a bit of it.

With two significant new additions to the quartet repertoire set in the home of earlier Americana, this issue can’t fail to move and delight. The recording registers every detail of these most engaging pieces.