Quartet in B flat Op. 18 No 6 - Beethoven

Quartet No 3 - kBartok

Mystic Play of Shadows - Jane O'Leary

Quartet in F - Ravel

The Lotus String Quartet from Japan made its Irish debut on Sunday night, opening a 12-venue Music Network tour at the Ramor Theatre in Virginia, Co Cavan.

The theatre, which was opened around 18 months ago, can accommodate an audience of 200 in a steeply-raked auditorium that, perhaps unexpectedly for a converted church, has an acoustic that's dry rather than reverberant. The dryness did occasionally highlight moments of wiry tone in the quartet's playing, but in general the Japanese players demonstrated a plain-speaking directness that served them and the music well. The danger of the Lotus's approach is that their music-making will seem dryly literal; their strictness of rhythm, in particular, runs the risk of introducing an air of monotony.

In both the opening and closing works, it was the first two movements which impressed most. The long-spun melodies of the slow movement in the Ravel simply didn't convince, although the composer would surely have approved of the generally unobtrusive style of the playing.

The Lotus's handling of Bartok was vivid and colourful, but not in a way that seemed to get to the heart of his compact Third Quartet. On the other hand, they brought a feeling of French sensuality to Jane O'Leary's bird-inspired Mystic Play of Shadows. In their hands, this work, which sounds not at all like birdsong, was both sharply-defined and atmospheric, the background murmurs and solo gestures all perfectly judged.

The Lotus Quartet's Music Network tour takes them to Ballymoney (tonight), Omagh (tomorrow), Antrim (Friday), Downpatrick, Castlebar, Dublin, Cork, Listowel and Knocktopher. Tel: 01-691 9429 for details.