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, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, 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.

Pianist Duncan Cumming ’93 returns to his alma mater with violinist Hilary Cumming, his wife, to perform works of Schubert, Brahms and Dvorák at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The program also includes Duo, a composition by William Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Admission is free, but tickets are required. For ticket reservations or more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Cumming is a Maine native, born in Presque Isle and raised in Wiscasset. He graduated with highest honors from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1993. His playing has been described by the Portland Press Herald as “technically flawless, thoughtful, deliberate and balanced.” Cumming has performed in some of the most prestigious concert halls in the United States and Europe including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Merkin Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City; and the Wallenstein Palace in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2009, he received a grant to record music of Mozart and Weber on Weber’s own 1812 Brodmann fortepiano.

Also this year, Cumming’s book, The Fountain of Youth: The Artistry of Frank Glazer (Tower Books) was published. This book is a portrait of the , an internationally renowned pianist, who taught Cumming.

Cumming received a master’s degree in 1996 from the New England Conservatory, and in 2003 earned a doctorate from Boston University. He is a member of the faculties of Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and the University at Albany.

Hilary Cumming studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has performed around the world. An adjunct professor of violin at the University at Albany, her most recent CD recording was made in August 2008 with the Musicians of the Old Post Road and is available from Meridien Records.

Along with the cellist Sölen Dikener, the Cummings constitute the Capital Piano Trio, the ensemble in residence at the University at Albany. The Cummings have two daughters and a son.

John Corrie conducts the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir sings music by Schubert and Haydn in 8 p.m. concerts Friday and Saturday, Dec. 5 and 6, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. The concerts are open to the public at no charge.

Directed by John Corrie and accompanied by musicians from the college and community, the 72-voice choir sings Franz Schubert’s Tov Lehodos and Franz Josef Haydn’s Te Deum and Lord Nelson Mass. Five choir members will sing solos.

Tov Lehodos is the only Hebrew text Schubert ever set to music. He completed this setting of a Jewish liturgical text in 1828, commissioned by the cantor of a Vienna synagogue.

The English naval hero Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson links the two Haydn pieces. Although Haydn’s setting of the Te Deum, a liturgical hymn of praise to God, was composed for the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, it was first performed during Nelson’s September 1800 visit to the court of Hungary’s noble Esterhazy family, for whom Haydn worked.

Originally titled Missa in angustiis (“Mass in the time of need”), the D-minor Mass now known as Lord Nelson was composed during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, in 1798. Nelson’s victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile is thought to have inspired Haydn as he composed the Mass, and the work was performed for Nelson during that same visit in 1800.

For more information about the concert, please call 207-786-6135.

Taking their cue from the musical salons that the Viennese composer often held with his friends, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ musicians will present some melodic themes that Franz Schubert carried over from his vocal music into instrumental compositions – for example, material from the songs “The Trout,” which Schubert parlayed into a popular string quintet, and “Death and the Maiden,” which he used in a string quartet.

In addition to Glazer, performers include ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty members Christina Astrachan, soprano; John Corrie, baritone; Atsuko Irai, soprano; Mark Howard, piano; James Parakilas, piano; and Kay Hamlin, flute. Violinist Hillary Cumming, who is head of applied music at Concord Academy in Concord, Mass., and a member of the Cecilia Trio, is guest artist.

For more information about the performance, please call 207-786-6135.