Zephyr Quartet’s new album Epilogue follows the adventurous new music ensemble’s announcement that after 20 years the quartet members would be taking “a break from initiating Zephyr projects to focus on individual pursuits and special opportunities”. While the ensemble stated “we want to be explicitly clear that this is not goodbye, but farewell for now”, it’s hard not to read this album as the end of an era for the group, who won the Art Music Award for Excellence by an Organisation last year.

Opening with the serene cries of White Bird, by the quartet’s Artistic Director and cellist Hilary Kleinig, the album features poignant, expressively performed music written by all four quartet members.

Violinist Belinda Gehlert’s Femme Fatales follows, opening with the lyrical melodies of Anne Boleyn before the thoughtful and mysterious central movement, Hedda Gabbler, gives way to driving adventure in the finale, Huldra, named for the forest creature of Norwegian folklore.

Birdsong returns with the raw, delightfully cacophonous joy of Kleinig’s Cockatoos, before her chant-like Exquisite Peace makes good on the promise of its title, bouncing bows skittering across the surface of languorously sliding string melodies.

The sonorous pizzicato chords of violinist...