Interview with Kuss Quartet & Naoko Shimizu -- part 3 When Mikayel Hakhnazaryan joined the quartet in 2008, replacing Felix Nickel, the quartet was thriving and busy, looking more for a member who would blend with them, rather than one who would force a change in direction. Hakhnazaryan had just been offered a solo cello post with a Swiss orchestra, but turned it down in order to join the Kuss Quartet . "My colleagues said, 'This is crazy! Don't do it! You can't leave a solo position in Switzerland for a string quartet!' But in Russia we say that if you don't take risks, you don't drink Champagne. And I'm glad." Hakhnazaryan's Armenian childhood brought many parallels with that of Kuss and Wille, he says, and made it easy for him to fit into the quartet's culture and way of working. "We were part of the Soviet Union, and the idea was that if you start music at an early age, then it is for a very serious reason, not just for pleasure. I started playing in string quartets very early, and we would spend hours every day playing together. It was a difficult time economically. The public transport didn't work, and it took me an hour to walk to school, but I was really happy." Hakhnazaryan describes the Kuss Quartet's playing as strikingly honest and positive. Shimizu agrees; she and they share common ground in the form of a mentor, Hungarian pianist Ferenc Rados. "I always felt that something