"Encounter" brings together two outstanding works of contemporary chamber music that speak a common language across cultures, histories, and inner worlds. Osvaldo Golijov's "The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind" and Pēteris Vasks' String Quartet No. 6 emerge from deeply different traditions – Jewish mysticism and Baltic spirituality – but converge in a shared quest for truth, memory, and transcendence. Both works are deeply personal, rooted in lived experience and faith, and animated by music's power to express what lies beyond words: longing, suffering, hope, and enlightenment. In this recording, these worlds don't merely exist alongside each other; they listen to one another, reflect each other, and transform each other.

Performed by the Arethusa Quartet with clarinetist Chen Halevi, "Encounter" is also a meeting of artistic paths. Golijov's ecstatic, ritualistic score unfolds as a spiritual ascent through dreams, prayers, and blindness – understood as a deeper inner vision – while Vasks' Sixth Quartet traces the arc of a life from farewell and remembrance to a final, quiet meeting with transcendence, illuminated by echoes of Beethoven. In both works, vulnerability and intensity are balanced by silence and song, darkness by light. The result is an album that feels both intimate and universal: an affirmation of our shared humanity and a reminder of music's enduring power to connect present and past, earth and spirit, performer and listener.