These recordings open up an impressive panorama of Daniel Glaus’s compositional oeuvre in the field of tension between sound, structure and spirituality. It brings together three string quartets from over four decades as well as the moving cantata Chammawet Ahawah for soprano, harp and string quartet.

Glaus’s approach to the string quartet is characterised by continuous experimentation with playing techniques, tonal colours and compositional models. Even the String Quartet 1980 from his student days, with its contrasting four movements – from the almost silent beginning to the Webern-related fugue to the fragile, mystical chorale – shows a search for the original, an acoustic self-questioning.

In the Third Quartet ‘Naezach’, Glaus takes up themes of Jewish mysticism: In the field of tension between structure and sound, a musical network of articulations unfolds, opening up a whole cosmos of expressive possibilities through precisely staggered formal sections, percussive effects and microtonal nuances.

The Fourth String Quartet, premiered by the Arditti Quartet in 2023, explores new paths: In a continuous stream of sound, a widely branched cosmos of monodies develops, oscillating between Gregorian chants, sonorous surges and quiet micro-intervals – a work of intense density and touching transparency.

The recording is brought to a close with Chammawet Ahawah (1988–2023), a work of deeply poetic power. Based on texts from the Song of Songs, it blends language, song, harp colours and string textures into a musical reflection on love, closeness and longing. Glaus uses synaesthetic colour harmonies and microtonal melodies to create a sensually charged, contemplative sound space.

Daniel Glaus (b. 1957) developed his multifaceted activities as a composer, performer, improviser, teacher, curator/organiser and researcher at an early age. His work has always been based on intensive listening to the unheard, the unknown, the incomprehensible, the silent, the fragile, the other, the interpersonal, the searching, the questioning, the border-crossing – be it as a composer, as a concert organist, as titular organist and responsible for church music at Bern Minster, as a professor of both composition and organ at the Zurich and Bern art academies, in his sensational research project ‘Innov-organ-um’ with the invention of the wind-dynamic organ or as the initiator and organiser of numerous congresses, academies, festivals and courses.