Brooklyn Rider have long been one of the most exciting acts on the string quartet circuit, but for years they have studiously avoided releasing a live album. Now The Wanderer, recorded in Paliesius Manor, Lithuania, finally captures the special frisson the group is capable of creating in concert. The pieces chosen for the project reflect Brooklyn Rider’s reputation for mixing old and new innovatively together in their concert programmes. “Somehow, Brooklyn Rider is happiest when we champion new works alongside the great historical canon of the string quartet,” viola player Nicholas Cords tells Apple Music. “The Wanderer is an album about life’s journey,” Cords continues, “and brings together new works written for us by two great composers (and dear friends) hailing originally from South America: Gonzalo Grau from Venezuela and Osvaldo Golijov from Argentina.” Schubert’s foreboding, aching “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, says Cords, is larger than life, and it’s a piece they adore. “It felt like the perfect choice to accompany the South American pieces,” he adds. Cords singles out “Plim”, the feather-light finale of Osvaldo Golijov’s Um Dia Bom (“A Good Day”), as a particularly beautiful and significant movement. “To us, this music is the embodiment of the spirit, Osvaldo’s homage to the late Chick Corea,” he says. “But it also communicates everlasting and transcendent qualities, despite its brief length. It transports us to that beautiful place beyond, but in the most transparent and gentle way imaginable.”