Seven Questions for the Lotus Quartet

What does a quartet need in order to make music together harmoniously for more than 30 years?

Stamina is important, as is a healthy culture of disagreement. Patience, of course, and above all tolerance. The work you do together takes place on a deeply personal level—so the chemistry between everyone involved simply has to be right. Familiarity and a shared musical understanding are essential. That also means accepting each individual’s personality just as it is. We are all strong and quite distinct personalities—and yet we feel as though we were born under the same star. We still find one another fresh, interesting, and amusing.

How did you come together back in 1992?

Tomoko Yamasaki, our violist, and I, Chihiro Saito, were invited by the Japanese Ministry of Culture and several embassies to tour South America as a piano quartet. After the tour, Tomoko and I were determined to continue making music together. Although Tomoko already held a position as principal violist with the Osaka Century Orchestra, she gave it up and moved to Tokyo, where the two violinists and I were just about to form a quartet.

The name “Lotus Quartet,” by the way, was suggested by the gentlemen of the Amadeus Quartet, with whom we shared a glass of wine one evening during a course in 1992. Norbert Brainin and his colleagues felt that the name should evoke both feminine and Japanese associations—it would help us build an international career. Of course, we found that idea rather clichéd. But as well-behaved Japanese students, we didn’t dare to object. Over the years, however, we have grown quite fond of the name…

Since summer 2025, Christine Busch has joined you as a violinist. The model of alternating violins is new for you. How did the new line-up come about?

The three of us had known, liked, and admired Christine for a long time. We were already closely connected on a personal level. Still, two fortunate coincidences came together here. Just at the time when Swantje Tauscher, who had been playing with us since 2022, told us she would be leaving the quartet, Christine moved into the top floor of the house where we all live and rehearse.

In the past, Christine had always been extremely busy and was also playing in other quartets. But now she had the capacity—and we are all overjoyed to have found each other! Christine is a wonderful violinist and an outstanding musician, but also a very strong personality who can bring many of her own impulses into the group.

What do you sound like? What defines you as a quartet?

We all play old Italian instruments whose combined sound produces warmth and richness. Beyond this “sound,” it is above all the influences we mentioned earlier—a deeply rooted yet sensuous German-Austrian quartet tradition—that merge in an interesting way with our Japanese socialisation.

Rainer Schmidt instilled in us the old-fashioned, yet so important, demand to always search for beauty in music.

Do four women play differently from four men or a mixed ensemble?

Hard to say—we don’t really think so. What matters for a successful collaboration in a quartet is not gender, but the individuality of the people involved, and above all their tolerance. It is so important to remain open to other ideas and to question established opinions in order to explore new interpretative approaches.

Is it true that the string quartet is the noblest genre of classical music?

“The perfection of four-part writing”—this is how Goethe described the string quartet in 1829: “One hears four rational people conversing, believes one may learn something from their discourse, and comes to know the particular qualities of the instruments.”

Since Joseph Haydn, who invented the genre and set the standard for later masters, the quartet has been a formation that places great demands on both performers and composers: precise knowledge of the technical possibilities and expressive range of the instruments, as well as the skill to bring out their individual characteristics within a shared “conversation” while shaping a unified whole.

It is deeply fulfilling when, as a musician, you find exactly the right place within the quartet—so that a structured and nuanced unity emerges, a shared resonance that the audience can also experience.

Where do you see your path leading in the coming years?

To New York, of course—to Carnegie Hall! But seriously: what we value most is when, in a concert, a subtle exchange of energy arises between us and the audience, and when we succeed in carrying the message of the music into the listeners’ hearts.

Of course, prestigious venues are a great attraction. But an intimate house concert can be just as fulfilling for us as musicians.

Interview: Anselm Cybinski