While it is with a lone cello – in this case the Australian String Quartet’s Sharon Grigoryan – that Charles Ives opens the leisurely fugue of his String Quartet No 1, From the Salvation Army, it is a work that evokes multitudes. The composer wrote the work in 1896 at the age of 21, and it draws on his childhood immersed in New England hymnody. The ASQ, kicking off its Ives Westlake Debussy tour at City Recital Hall, captured something of the joyous communal music-making that so inspired Ives. They revelled in the layers of hymn fragments that make up the work, giving the Prelude a light-footed chirpiness and the Offertory third movement a flowing tempo, before capping it all off with a boisterous – though by no means rushed – Postlude.

The Australian String Quartet in Ives Westlake Debussy. Photo © Sam Jozeps

The spiritual essence of the work tied into the world premiere at the heart of this program, a new string quartet by Nigel Westlake, Sacred Sky. A “shrine in music”, as the composer describes it, it is dedicated to his late sister Kate, who died of cancer in early 2018. Musically and...