If Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble was a TV series, then Brooklyn Rider would be the spinoff — the Frasier to Silk Road's Cheers. Having played in the famed cellist's globetrotting world music ensemble, the members of this oddly named string quartet could hardly be expected to confine themselves to playing Haydn and Mozart and Debussy. Their first two albums featured original works, including pieces by the quartet's members and a whole disc done in collaboration with their Silk Road partner Kayhan Kalhor, the master of the Persian fiddle. Now, Brooklyn Rider returns with an even more ambitious and far-ranging disc, built around…Debussy.

There has been a tendency to treat Debussy's one and only string quartet with a hazy Impressionism, but Brooklyn Rider's straightforward, no-nonsense reading — which might sound dry and brittle in another context — neatly ties Debussy's century-old piece to the contemporary cross-cultural works that precede it. Given the influence of Indonesian gamelan music on Debussy's quartet, what seems unlikely on paper turns out to be surprisingly appropriate in actuality.

Violinist Colin Jacobsen opens the disc with "Achille's Heel" (get it? Claude-Achille Debussy?), a piece with echoes of traditional Asian and popular Western music. Kojiro… read more »