Whether it’s by playing solo Bach with astonishing physical and intellectual dexterity, jamming with the likes of Yo Yo Ma, Joshua Bell and Emanuel Ax or penning complex genre-defying music, these two MacArthur Fellowship winners have earned their classical chops and no justification is needed for reviewing their second duo album here. Other than to say that it’s brilliant.

Mandolinist Chris Thile, of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers fame, and multi-Grammy Award-winning double bassist Edgar Meyer have always been willing to push the envelope when it comes to extending the range and scope of traditional American music, in Thile’s case bluegrass in particular and to such an extent it’s sometimes cost him fans. ‘Bass & Mandolin’ features 10 original compositions that run the gamut from the accessible to the arcane and the sweet to the strident.

Compare the subtly textured Look What I Found for mandolin and piano or the ravishing pointillistics of I’ll Remember For You for guitar and piano with the furious, dangerously addictive celerity of Tarnation or the spiky angularity of Big Top, both for mandolin and double bass: despite the wild gear-changes in style and mood, both blues and Bach run through all their veins. And if El cinco real leads you a dizzying barnyard dance, The Auld Beagle offers up a warm, punch-drunk dream.

If the combination of mandolin and double bass might at first seem counter-intuitive, in the hands of Thile and Meyer it seems the most natural thing in the world.