Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has consistently evoked the sounds and vistas of the natural world in her instrumental writing—the fecund valleys and stark coasts of her homeland, in particular—and her first string quartet is no exception. Masterfully performed by Chicago’s Spektral Quartet, this three-movement gem balances astringent abstraction—including unpitched noises and percussive extended techniques—with melancholic grandeur, often voicing those polarities at once. The aptly titled Enigma is fueled by a sense of mystery, translating sounds foreign and familiar to our holistic experiences on Earth in order to deliberately smear the line between the quotidian and the sublime. Sounds from each side of the divide overlap, collide, and inform one another, producing a deliciously ambiguous trip that seems apropos for our fraught times. Despite the emotional uncertainty some passages transmit, spiked as they are with dissonance and brittleness, there’s an abiding humanity at the heart of the music that provides a guiding light.