Enjoy a selection of musical Viennese confections served with a side of history and musical insight during a special DaPonte String Quartet event at St. Andrews Village March 12 at 11 a.m.

The Quartet will play selections from composers known for their connection to Vienna during its cultural heyday, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Webern and Fritz Kreisler. The March 12^th event will offer a very special musical preview of the quartet’s upcoming concert on March 21 at Boothbay Harbor’s St. Columba Church.

After playing each selection, quartet members will explain aspects of the music, such as recurring motifs as well as the historical context in which the music was composed and why the composer created the piece.

The St. Andrews Village event will offer a chance to not only hear great music played by a quartet with a nationwide reputation, but take part in a discussion of the music itself in an intimate atmosphere.

A special connection to listeners in the Mid-Coast region has become a hallmark of the DaPonte Quartet since they first came to Maine about twenty years ago after receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant to “embed” themselves in a community anywhere in the United States.

After the eight months were up, Amy MacDonald, Executive Director of Friends of the DaPonte String Quartet, said that the many Maine friends the Quartet had made asked them to stay. At the same time, the members of the Quartet had fallen in love with the state.

The result over the next two decades was something very unusual, and perhaps unique in the world of classical music: a world class chamber music ensemble based in a rural area playing 70 concerts a year in churches, schools and historic buildings, mostly in Maine, but also in national venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall and internationally.

A New York Times writer described the experience of listening to the Quartet in one of their typical Maine venues as “like watching the Celtics play in the local gym.”

In July of last year, DownEast Magazine named them Maine’s “Best Musical Group” including all genres.  Most recently, they played on Florida’s Sanibel Island and in Tampa, Florida and in the Skowhegan Opera House in Maine.

The March 12 event is free and open to the public, but because space is limited, please RSVP. For more information on the performance or on St. Andrews Village, please call Bob Drury at 633-0920.