The ensemble places particular emphasis on its mission to combine classics of the string quartet repertoire with contemporary compositions in unexpected ways, thereby opening up new musical horizons. This idea also forms the core of a series of recent recordings with which the Amaryllis Quartet has been celebrating its 20th anniversary since November 2024. Here, Beethoven’s string quartets meet key works from the past 80 years—“face to face,” as the title of the series promises.
The Amaryllis Quartet’s collaboration with renowned contemporary composers is also characterized by an unrelenting search for the new. At the ensemble’s suggestion and commission, works by Heinz Holliger, David Philip Hefti, Fabián Panisello, and many others have been composed in recent years; the quartet has worked on these pieces together with the composers and premiered them. However, the ensemble also cultivates classics of the recent modern era and continually unearths undiscovered treasures from a repertoire yet to be fully explored.

The Amaryllis Quartet’s international career began in 2011. In quick succession, the quartet—which trained with Walter Levin in Basel, later with the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne, and with Günter Pichler in Madrid—first won the Finalist Prize at the prestigious Premio Paolo Borciani in Reggio Emilia and, just four weeks later, the First Prize and the Monash University Grand Prize at the 6th International Chamber Music Competition in Melbourne.
In 2012, the ECHO Klassik award was presented for the CD *White*, featuring works by Haydn and Webern, followed by numerous other recordings that received high praise from the press.

The Amaryllis Quartet is a regular guest at concert series at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Vienna Musikverein, the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and the Dai-ichi Seimei Hall in Tokyo, as well as at festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Schwetzingen SWR Festival, the Heidelberg Spring, the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Lucerne Festival.

In addition, the quartet launched its own concert series at the Solothurn Concert Hall and is presenting a cycle under the title “amaryllis 3×3” at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, in Lübeck, and at the Sendesaal in Bremen.
The Amaryllis Quartet places great importance on collaborating with other musicians. In recent years, the quartet has performed alongside artists such as Fabio di Càsola, Nobuko Imai, Volker Jacobsen, Alexander Krichel, Sebastian Manz, Jens-Peter Maintz, Ramón Ortega Quero, and Lise de la Salle, and has worked with composers such as Wolfgang Rihm and György Kurtág.
The Amaryllis Quartet’s artistic work was funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2021 to 2024.