For the Maggini String Quartet, playing at the Holywell Music Room is almost like a homecoming, as I discovered when I caught up with second violinist and co-founder David Angel – whose violin, incidentally, made by the 16th-century Italian maker Giovanni Paulo Maggini, gave the quartet its name.

“We’ve played there quite a bit over the years, and have many, many friends in Oxford,” David told me. “It’s the oldest concert hall in the western world, and for quartets one of the very best. It has a marvellous acoustic – it’s very warm and responsive, and not too echo-ey. It gives you a lovely feeling of feedback when you’re playing it. We’ve always loved playing there, so it’s great to be doing this concert.

“We’re delighted with the renovation work that’s planned for the Holywell. We’re delighted that the façade and the railings are going to be put back, and it’ll be very nice that there’ll be a bar downstairs as well as a seminar room. All of that sounds to me to be extremely good news.”

It’s now 21 years since David formed the group with viola player Martin Outram and cellist Michal Kaznowski, after the three had worked together in other quartets for a number of years.

“I think it was the sheer love of quartet playing that brought us together,” explained David. “That was the most satisfaction we could get out of a musical career, really, as string players. The repertoire, which is second to none, and the business of being able to decide exactly how you play something, we found we couldn’t really do without.

“We’ve had a few changes of first fiddle, but we’re delighted now to have Gina McCormack with us. She joined us nearly a year ago, and she was somebody who we all knew very well and had played with on occasions.”

Over the years, the Magginis have established themselves firmly at the forefront of the British chamber music scene, becoming particularly known for their championing of 20th-century English composers.

‘That’s been an amazing discovery for us,” said David. “I didn’t think when we embarked on it in 1994 that we’d come across such a richness, such a wealth of repertoire. Since then we’ve made the acquaintance of people like Britten, Elgar and Vaughan Williams, as well as people like Bax, Ireland, Bliss, Bridge and Rubbra.” It was the Magginis’ reputation for playing this English repertoire that led, in 2002, to a five-year collaboration with Peter Maxwell Davies, who wrote ten quartets for them, commissioned by Naxos.

“That was a huge project,” David recalled. “I think it’s unprecedented to have a contracted five-year relationship between a quartet and a composer, over ten quartets. It’s one of the most extraordinary things we’ve ever done.

“To work so closely with a composer was extraordinary.”

Not surprisingly, the forthcoming concert at the Holywell will feature at least one piece by an English composer – appropriately enough, the Oxford-born Edmund Rubbra.

“We’re doing his first quartet, which he dedicated to Vaughan Williams, because it was through Vaughan Williams’s constant encouragement that it actually got completed, as the young Rubbra had his doubts about it. But it’s a beautiful piece – very tuneful.

“The slow movement is perhaps more like Vaughan Williams than anything Rubbra wrote, because he didn’t usually sound like Vaughan Williams, but this one certainly has echoes of the older friend.

“It moves very cleverly into the last movement – I won’t say any more than that!”

The Rubbra piece is sandwiched between two masters of the quartet – Haydn and Schubert.

“We’re going to be starting off with a great Haydn quartet, opus 20 no.2 in C major. It has some of the most extraordinary textures and writing that Haydn ever produced, and that’s saying something!

“It’s a great quartet for cello, because it gets long solo lines in the first, second and third movements.

The last movement is a fugue, but it’s a fugue with four subjects, so it’s very complex, and almost all of it played pianissimo. It’s played all in stage whispers, then there’s a surprise at the end, which I wouldn’t want to give away!

“Then we play one of the most famous works of the repertoire – Schubert’s D minor Death and the Maiden. I think everything’s been said about that that could be – but we’re very much looking forward to doing it anyway!

“It has a special place in the hearts of most quartet players – sometimes so special that they’re actually scared of playing it, in case it doesn’t quite come up to their vision of it. I’ve known that happen, but happily it hasn’t happened to us yet!”

The Maggini String Quartet will be at the Holywell Music Room on Sunday. Tickets from the Oxford Playhouse (Tel: 01865 305305 or visit www.ticketsoxford.com) or from the Chris Whitehead, Treasurer of the Oxford Chamber Music Society (Tel: 01491 577067). For more information about the Holywell Music Room Appeal, visit www.holywellfund.org.