With so many superb young string quartets active on the music scene, it is heartening to realise that the genre can look to the future with optimism. Take the Ulysses Quartet, who make an auspicious recording debut with this album. The musicians play works of three centuries with stylistic flexibility and technical prowess. The performances reflect the ensemble’s deep immersion in the rhetoric of each score as they catapult the music from the page with a blend of thrusting energy and nuanced detail.

The disc’s title, ‘Shades of Romani Folklore’, should be considered only as a starting point. While all three pieces contain elements (shades, as it were) of Romani culture, the composers go beyond local influences to create distinctive sound worlds and narratives. The most recent work, Paul Frucht’s Rhapsody, was inspired by Ravel’s Tzigane, whose alluring flourishes originally for violin and piano (then piano and orchestra) are transformed here for string quartet in contemporary contexts. Frucht achieves an individual voice by sending each instrument into fervent orbit and combining them for passages of poignant utterance and communal ecstasy.

Not far removed from this ardent galaxy is Janáček’s String Quartet No 2, Intimate Letters, which evokes the composer’s (platonic) relationship with a woman 38 years younger. The viola, representing the woman, is featured prominently in yearning phrases, eloquently shaped by Colin Brookes, that reach out to the other instruments in fits of amorous frenzy, when not in isolation. The Ulysses players tame the score’s metrical intricacies while focusing urgently on the expressive arcs, with their mooring in the composer’s idiosyncratic Moravian speech melodies. Hearing Janáček’s confessional writing shaped with such vibrant coloration might be akin to eavesdropping if the artistry weren’t so captivating.

The disc opens with the oldest piece, Beethoven’s String Quartet in C minor, Op 18 No 4, whose finale hints of Romani character. But what seizes the ears is the way the Ulysses take an oft-played score and instil every moment with fresh motivation. The performance is gleaming and transparent, a signal that the ensemble promise to bring as much sophistication, imagination and vitality to Beethoven’s other quartets as they will to music by a panoply of composers from long ago and today.