One may rightly claim that Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813), who traced his roots to Bohemia, was one of the most productive composers of the 18th c. + He wrote a total of 1,377 (!) works; sixty string quartets having appeared in print through to 1787, with thirty-six others in manuscript or documented in catalogue entries. + Quantity aside, Vanhal quite early gained fame with the quality of his works. + For CPO, the Lotus String Quartet, which gained notice with its triumph at the Int’l Chamber Music Competition in Osaka, Japan in 1994, interprets a selection of these quartets.