Here's a fascinating amalgam of recent works for string quartet. All of the composers hail from — or have worked extensively in ­countries around the Pacific Rim. Although they represent different cultures and musical vantage-points, their identification with specific regional elements binds them here as an artistic community.

Del Sol String Quartet

Each of the nine pieces that the Del Sol String Quartet perform on their new release, "Ring of Fire" — a reference to volcanoes surrounding the Pacific — vividly reflects a distinctive compositional perspective. Kui Dong's Spring brings to mind Vivaldi's famous paean to nature as it pays deft, delicate tribute to minimalism. In his fiercely dramatic and spiky Spiral X – “In Memoriam", Chinary Ung evokes genocide in the quartet's instrumental and vocal wailing and whistling.

Jack Body exults in multi-hued interplay in Epicycle, which incorporates Korean sources, while Gabriela Lena Frank goes boldly folkloric in Chasqui, a depiction of communication in the vast spaces of the Andes. Western and Korean worlds meet in the frenetic flights and poignant gestures Hyo-shin Na's Song of the Beggars.

The myriad string techniques Zhou Long employ in Song of the Ch’in give haunting voice to the music's Chinese soundscape, which abounds in vehement and glistening details. John Adams's animated freshness of texture pervades the brief Toot Nipple, a stark contrast to the despairing beauty of Peter Sculthorpe's Yearning (the third movement of his String Quartet No 16), with roots in a central Afghanistan love song.

The San Francisco-based Del Sol String Quartet are masters of all musical things they survey on this disc, playing with a combination of ferocious attack, riveting interplay and silken splendour. They end as quietly as possible in an improvisation, What Remains, an exploration of delicate instrumental and vocal colors.

Donald Rosenberg