MUSIC in Peebles opened the 2013/14 season in October with the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, founded in 1968, when its members were students at Cambridge University, and now one of the world’s leading quartets. On Tuesday, January 14, the New Year is to be ushered in by the Wu Quartet, founded in 2002 (when its members were pupils at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester) and already established as one of the most exciting ensembles of the new generation.

The Wu Quartet, which takes its name from its leader, Qian Wu, has won many international competitions and prizes including in Vienna, Italy and Holland as well as the UK. Most recently, in 2013, they were the inaugural winners of a new chamber music prize from the Royal Philharmonic Society. Their concert appearances have taken them to many of the UK’s major venues, including Wigmore Hall, the Purcell Room, Snape Maltings and Bridgewater Hall, as well as to concert halls across Europe and even as far afield as Beijing. Critical acclaim has followed them wherever they have performed, with reviewers declaring ‘this quartet will without doubt go far’ and ‘with this concert they verily attained world class’.

The quartet is establishing a reputation for combining fresh, engaging readings of great masterpieces with revelatory performances of less familiar works.

In Peebles, they live up to this by placing at the heart of their programme the remarkable ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ by Hungarian composer György Ligeti, his first quartet, written in 1954. A review of an earlier performance by the Wu Quartet described this piece as ‘a kaleidoscope of changing pace, changing harmony, changing moods and changing style’ that ‘astonished the audience [and] seized everyone with a grip that was like a rivet’. The Wu Quartet’s viola player, Matt Kettle, calls it ‘a real audience pleaser’. Before the Ligeti comes an exuberant quartet by Haydn and the concert ends with Dvorak’s Quartet in G, Opus 106, his final quartet and one of his greatest works, which the Wu Quartet played at King’s Place, London to great acclaim: “when the final chords of the last movement were played, the audience rose to its feet in a roar of appreciation.” The concert will be held in the Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 14. As with all Music in Peebles concerts, everyone is welcome.

Tickets are available from the Eastgate box office (01721 725777) at £13, or £6 if accompanying a child under 12. Entry is free for all school students and Music in Peebles members.