Some might consider that a backhanded compliment, one that’s not worth repeating, given that his First Quartet dates from 1966, shortly after the composer completed his studies with Nadia Boulanger, and is only tangentially connected to his mature canon. But I mean it sincerely. By 1966 even Morton Feldman hadn’t quite worked out that seemingly insignificant, low-key melodic modules, when customised and transformed, could build into overarching statements. Feldman would ultimately work this conceptual disjoint between material and form – or scale, he called it – into a grander and aesthetically more far-reaching art than Glass’s; but Glass’s structural mastery, the sort of blue-sky stuff that would serve him well subsequently in Music for Twelve Musicians, is already operational as tart, fidgety dissonances hop in and around lopsided structural grooves.

With cycles by the Kronos Quartet (Nonesuch), Smith Quartet (Signum, 6/08) and Carducci Quartet (Naxos, 9/10) already in the can, Brooklyn Rider offer the world premiere recording of a suite from Glass’s music for Sean Mathias’s film Bent, but that’s not necessarily a recommendation because it sounds like everything else he’s written over the past 30 years. The Smiths stress the First Quartet’s modernist core; Brooklyn Rider blend Glass’s sonorities more amenably. The choice is yours.

Stylistically, the later quartets are reassuringly/depressingly familiar. String Quartet No 3 was also cobbled together from film music and is painfully thin; No 5 is just thin anyway. String Quartet No 4 is blessed with some chancy polytonal ideas, which highlights how manufactured the other music feels. But these performances have been meticulously prepared, as you’d expect from the recording division of Glass’s own publishing company.