A Rain From the Shadows, from Adelaide’s award-winning Zephyr Quartet, is bold, brilliant and beautiful.  This is an album to fall in love with at first listen, yet with further flirtation, the recording opens up its various stratums to seduce the listener into a lasting relationship.

It’s musically tight and evenly drifts from muscular to mellow and sometimes flits as effortlessly as a kite in the breeze. The most impressive thing about the album, though, is that for all the individual players’ virtuosity – Belinda Gehlert and Emily Tulloch on violin, Jason Thomas on viola and Hilary Kleinig on cello – the music always sounds like Zephyr Quartet in concord.

The original compositions are inspired by poetry from a variety of writers. When reading the words (from the supplied booklet), it’s fascinating how atmospheric the poems feels when coupled with the mastery of the music’s complexity. There’s a polished sophistication, handsome flashes, and transcendent colours and seams in the work’s proportions.  This is a chamber music ensemble with top-notch musicality.

There’s something wonderful about how the quartet is crafting its own style of musical collaboration.  So much is packed into every phrase, it’s impossible to do the works justice with mere descriptions.  Yet there is also plenty of room for tunes such as “Ewens Ponds”, “Dunes”, and “Flying” to breathe, and enough drama in every emotionally balanced composition to beguile the listener.

Simply put, A Rain From the Shadows is a knockout.