The DaPonte String Quartet: violist Kirsten Monke, violinists Dino Liva and Lydia Forbes, cellist Myles Jordan.

Pianist Frank Glazer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Pianists Frank Glazer and George Lopez join the DaPonte String Quartet for a two-concert series at �ֲ���ý called Culture and Catastrophe, commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I.

Artist in residence at �ֲ���ý since 1980, Glazer joins the quartet for Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor (Op. 15) and Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor (Op. 25) at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 20, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Bela Bartok’s Duos for Violins will also be performed.

At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 25, Lopez joins the quartet in the Olin Concert Hall to perform Claude Debussy’s Violin Sonata in G Minor and Frank Bridge’s There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook. The program will also include Zoltan Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7.

Tickets cost $25 and are available at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and from or 207-529-4555.

George Lopez (Copyright Dennis Griggs/Courtesy of Bowdoin College).

Glazer is a renowned international pianist who remains vital and active is his 100th year. Lopez is the Beckwith Artist in Residence at Bowdoin College and conductor of the Bowdoin Chamber Orchestra. He has been featured as recitalist and soloist with orchestras in such places as Paris, London, Cologne, Los Angeles and New York.

The DaPonte String Quartet came to Maine 22 years ago from Philadelphia and were this month voted the “Best Musical Group in Maine” by readers of Down East Magazine. They perform more than 40 concerts a year, year round, across the state of Maine.

John Farrell performs T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” from memory.

John Farrell, a principal in Maine’s groundbreaking Figures of Speech Theatre, recites from memory Four Quartets, a suite of poems often considered T.S. Eliot’s greatest, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Also in Olin that evening, the renowned DaPonte String Quartet follows Farrell with a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 (Op. 132) in A minor, thought by many scholars to have been an inspiration for Four Quartets.

The evening is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. Please visit . For more information, please call 207-786-6163.

First undertaken in 2011 with permission — rarely granted — from Eliot’s estate, Farrell’s recitation of Four Quartets affords audiences an opportunity to immerse themselves in 1,000 lines of poetry exploring humankind’s relationship with time and with experience itself.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, Eliot is known for such poems as “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” among many other works of poetry, prose and drama.

The DaPonte String Quartet.

He wrote the poems constituting Four Quartets from 1936 to 1942, and they were published as a book in 1943.

According to the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, the poems reflect Eliot’s insights into the cyclical nature of life “through themes and images deftly woven throughout the four poems.

“The work addresses the connections of the personal and historical present and past, spiritual renewal, and the very nature of experience; it is considered the poet’s clearest exposition of his Christian beliefs.”

Figures of Speech Theatre

Figures of Speech Theatre has toured the world for more than 30 years with original works created at the intersection of drama, poetry, sculpture and dance. John Farrell and his wife, Carol Farrell, co-founded Figures of Speech in 1982 to explore the interplay of puppets, actors, shadows, movement and masks.

The company is known for psychologically rich, visually stunning adaptations of folk tales, classical myths and children’s stories such as Hans Christian Andersen’s “Nightingale.”Figures of Speech retains a strong commitment to teaching and performing in schools and theatrical venues throughout its home state of Maine.

Figures of Speech is a four-time recipient of the coveted UNIMA Citation of Excellence, the highest distinction in American puppet theatre.

DaPonte String Quartet and Beethoven’s Op. 132

Founded in Philadelphia in 1991, the DaPonte String Quartet surprised the musical world soon thereafter by moving from a cosmopolitan urban area to rural Maine. Nationally known and with a touring schedule that reaches into Western Europe, the DSQ remains deeply rooted in mid-coast Maine.

The members of the quartet are violinists Lydia Forbes and Dino Liva, who was a founding member of the quartet; violist Kirsten Monke and cellist Myles Jordan, another founding member. The DSQ is known for a repertoire that that spans virtually the entire history of music, from 17th-century works to cutting-edge contemporary quartets. They are also known for the inventiveness and freshness of their interpretations.

While the exact relationship between Beethoven’s late Op. 132 quartet and Eliot’s Four Quartets isn’t clear, scholars believe that there was at least a subliminal connection between the music and the poetry.

In a letter to the poet and novelist Stephen Spender, Eliot wrote that “There is a sort of heavenly, or at least more than human, gaiety about some of [Beethoven’s] later things, which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruits of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.”

The DaPonte String Quartet, bassist Richard Hartshorne and pianist Chiharu Naruse join forces for two of chamber music’s best-loved works at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, �ֲ���ý College, 75 Russell St.

The program comprises Dvorák’s quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96 (“American”) and Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 114, D. 667 (“Trout”). Admission is free, but tickets required. For more information, contact this olinarts@bates.edu or 207-786-6135.

The members of the DaPonte quartet are cellist Myles Jordan, violist Kirsten Monke, and violinists Lydia Forbes and Ferdinand “Dino” Liva. Founded in Philadelphia in 1991, the quartet first came to Maine in 1995 on a Rural Residency Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music America.

Unlike many artists who undertake residencies in rural communities, the musicians and their families put down roots in Maine. Today the quartet is a pillar of the state’s chamber music community. Profiled in The New York Times and on CBS Sunday Morning, the foursome has an active performing schedule and is known for its youth education programs.

is a member of the applied music faculties at �ֲ���ý, the University of Maine Farmington, the Portland Conservatory of Music and the Bay Chamber School. A native of Japan, she studied with renowned pianist Frank Glazer, an artist in residence at �ֲ���ý, following her move to the U.S. in 2002. In addition to her work as a performer, she is a music teacher, chamber music coach and music competition adjudicator and accompanist.

An internationally renowned double bassist, was a member of the Apple Hill Chamber Players for 30 years and served as director of their summer festival. Of his 1997 recording of Bach solo cello suites, adapted for bass, Fanfare Magazine wrote, “Hartshorne proves himself a profound expositor of Bach’s sacred texts.” In 2004, Hartshorne formed the nonprofit Bach With Verse, traveling extensively to bring music to underserved audiences around the world.

Premiered in 1894, the String Quartet No. 12 is one of Czech composer Antonín Dvo?ák’s best-known chamber works. Written while the composer was living in America, and around the same time as his “New World” Symphony, the piece is celebrated for its marriage of Middle European style with characteristically American touches — an African American spiritual, the song of a Midwestern bird, the presence of a train.

Nicknamed the “Trout Quintet” because it refers to an earlier Schubert song titled “The Trout,” the Piano Quintet in A major by Franz Schubert is written for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. Written in 1819 but not published until a decade later, after the composer’s death, it’s known in particular for distinctively attractive sonorities, especially in the piano writing.

Composed of violinists Dean Arthur Stein and Ferdinand Liva, violist Mark Preston and cellist Myles Jordan, the Damariscotta-based DaPonte String Quartet has received awards from Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia. The Quartet members have performed on Maine Public Radio’s classical music program Music Du Jour, and their recent CD release features works by Beethoven and Hugo Wolf.

Ten years ago Astrachan came to the U.S. from her native Switzerland, where she graduated summa cum laude from the Zurich Music Conservatory, founded the early music ensemble Florelegium Musicum and sang as a member of the Zurich Opera House Choir. Since fall 1995, she has been on the Portland Conservatory of Music faculty and also teaches privately at her home in Portland. She is regularly heard with the Maine Baroque Ensemble and the Portland Early Music Consort, which she co-founded. In honor of Schubert’s 200th birthday, she presented several acclaimed Leider recitals and was the featured singer in the Portland Concert Association’s Schubert Symposium in March 1997.