If success was measured according to output and sales units alone, Glass would be head and shoulders above his contemporaries. His compositions for conventional combinations, including the five string quartets included on this disc, have already appeared on recordings by the Kronos and Duke quartets, but the Smith Quartet have been the first to release the complete cycle.
Quartets Nos 2 to 5, written between 1983 and 1991, form a neat and consistent set, from the enigmatic, introspective Second, via the expressive Third and quirkily bitonal Fourth, to the neo-romantic, almost Tchaikovskian opening gesture of the Fifth. The Smith Quartet's thoughtful and measured performance allows subtle metric, linear and textural features to rise unassumingly to the surface, enhanced on this recording by a clear, balanced stereo image, and played with characteristic precision and projection by the ensemble.
The First Quartet is something of an anomaly, however. Written soon after Glass's studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris during the mid-1960s, it has been viewed either as a transitional work of marginal interest or a potent symbol of Glass's emerging minimalist style. What connects this work with later Glass – at least more than the Cageian silence – is the work's obsessive preoccupation with cyclical repetition, although the accompanying atonally charged atmosphere seems light years away from the lush harmonies of the Fifth Quartet.

The Smith Quartet's thoughtful and measured performance allows subtle metric, linear and textural features to rise unassumingly to the surface, enhanced on this recording by a clear, balanced stereo image, and played with characteristic precision and projection by the ensemble.