THE New Year opens in style at Southampton's Turner Sims Concert Hall with two very special performances by the internationally renowned Lindsay String Quartet.

Regarded as one of the world's greatest classical ensembles, the quartet will perform two concerts on January 8 and 9 centring on the works of Beethoven and British composer Michael Tippett and forming part of the Turner Sims 30th anniversary season.

The concerts will be particularly poignant because, after 40 years of captivating audiences around the world, The Lindsay Quartet will be retiring this summer, making this one of the last opportunities local fans have to see them.

Those final two concerts feature all five of Michael Tippett's string quartets, written between 1934 and 1991. The Lindsays are synonymous with the composer's music. They were the first to perform his fourth quartet; commissioned the fifth and were described by Tippett himself as 'the best friend a composer can have'.

To open the weekend the Turner Sims hosts a Tippett Discovery Session on January 8 at 2.30pm. The session includes an introduction to Tippett by his biographer Ian Kemp and a talk on Tippett's music by composer Julian Phillips.

To complete the afternoon The Lindsay Quartet will talk about their long careers to fans.

Throughout the weekend the Turner Sims will be hosting a special touring exhibition. Entitled Man of our Time, the exhibition features extracts from concert programmes, photographs and pages from several of Tippett's manuscripts, giving a fascinating glimpse of the composer at work.

During their own career The Lindsay Quartet have performed over 300 works. Their complete cycles of the Beethoven quartets have become landmark events, most recently in London, Sydney, Tokyo, Edinburgh, Paris, San Francisco and Princeton.

Tickets for the two farewell concerts cost £16 each. Tickets for the Saturday afternoon Discovery Session are free but are required for entry. To book for either, contact the box office on023 8059 5151.