Floodplain, Kronos Quartet's most recent Nonesuch release, features original arrangements of traditional music and newly commissioned pieces inspired by the idea that floodplains—which are prone to devastating flooding—will experience new life after a catastrophe, just as cultures that undergo great difficulty will experience creative fertility.

New York Times music critic Steve Smith, in his album review, finds this to be a metaphor well suited to the record's repertoire, and fully in keeping with Kronos's core beliefs, beginning with its earliest performances of contemporary composer George Crumb's Black Angels more than 35 years ago, which "turned the introverted quartet idiom outward through its extramusical effects and social concerns. Mr. Harrington and company have been extending that path ever since."

Of Floodplain, Smith writes, "Those in search of musical exotica will not be disappointed," from the "seductive pop from Egypt" of its opener to "a gorgeous Lebanese devotional hymn" to a "haunting Iranian lullaby." Furthermore, he suggests that the album title's "potent metaphor for cultures whose native arts have been shaped by migration and threatened by political and religious conflict" can be seen in such pieces as Floodplain's 22-minute closing track, ... hold me, neighbor, in this storm ..., by Serbian-born composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, who, "intermingles rustic, pious, intimate and bellicose themes in a gripping sequence, evoking a homeland sundered by ethnic wars."

Read the full review at nytimes.com.