Attacca Quartet first formed with four students at the Juilliard School in New York in the early 2000s, making their Carnegie Hall debut in 2003. The current line-up is Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni (violins), Nathan Schram (viola), and Andrew Yee (cello).

In their programs, they aim to combine iconic pillars of the repertoire with new music by living composers, and that is what we got this evening: two works by American composer Caroline Shaw, plus the well-known String Quartet in F (1903) by Maurice Ravel.

Shaw’s music is becoming increasingly familiar following her 2013 award of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Partita for Eight Voices. It was written for the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, of which Shaw was a founding member. (She is a singer, as well as a pianist, organist, violinist, and composer.)

Shaw has worked closely with Attacca Quartet; indeed, the two works we heard tonight have been recorded by the quartet (on the Nonesuch label; both releases won Grammy Awards). She is at home in many genres, including film music and pop.

Three Essays is a 20-minute work in three continuous movements. In contemporary classical music, the ‘essay’ has become established as a short but densely...