String Quartet

It stands to reason that a string quartet bearing Marian Anderson's name would blaze a unique trail in the world of classical music. Anderson, after all, was the African-American singer who changed the course of her nation's history with her concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939. Denied the opportunity to perform at Washington's D.A.R. Constitution Hall because of her race, the artist enthralled 75,000 listeners with the luscious contralto voice destined to become one of the great expressive forces of the 20th century.

For a few moments last week, Allison Stanley got an inkling of what it would be like to be a professional musician. The 15-year-old sophomore at Ellicott City's Homewood School played cello while accompanied by three members of the acclaimed Marian Anderson String Quartet. As she nervously played in front of her classmates, her rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" accompanied by violins and viola filled the room with a beautiful, rich sound. The workshop held in the music room at Homewood, an alternative school, was part of an outreach program run by the Candlelight Concert Society - a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of music in Howard County.

The American String Quartet's concert will provide an opportunity to be swept away by three remarkable pieces of music at 4 p.m. Sunday at Smith Theatre at Howard Community College. The American String Quartet, formed in 1974, has won critical acclaim for its performances of the classical string quartet repertoire and for its collaborations with distinguished contemporary composers. Sunday's program by quartet members Daniel Avshalomov (viola), Margo Tatgenhorst Drakos (cello), Peter Winograd and Laurie Carney (violins)

This much is clear: Under the auspices of the Candlelight Concert Society, the Alexander String Quartet will play three Beethoven quartets Saturday night at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre.But which of Beethoven's 16 masterpieces in that genre will they perform? The smiling, high-spirited Opus 18, No. 2 from Beethoven's earliest batch of quartets? Or will it be the grandly emotional Opus 59, No. 1, one of three quartets dedicated to Count Andreas Rasumovsky, Russia's ambassador in Vienna who was one of Beethoven's most generous patrons?

Two violins, one viola, one cello. A century of ideas and challenges. That's the focus of New Chamber Festival Baltimore, an ambitious venture being presented this week by the Shriver Hall Concert Series, Peabody Institute, Evergreen House Foundation and members of the former Chamber Music Society of Baltimore. In the compact span of three days, there will be five concerts by three ensembles, covering music by 20 composers. Several lectures and a panel discussion will be squeezed in, too. The extraordinary scope of this inaugural festival offers an immersion course in string-quartet history - general music history, really - since 1903.

Even classical music aficionados hear Peter Schickele's name and automatically think of a hilariously clever comedian responsible for unleashing the music of the infamous P.D.Q. Bach on an unsuspecting world.But while the world's funniest musicologist has won fame via laughter in P.D.Q.'s immortal works such as "Iphigenia in Brooklyn," the "Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons," and the semi-lovely "Shleptet in E-flat," most of his music is no laughing matter.Indeed, Schickele is a serious composer as a Candlelight Concert audience will find out Saturday evening at 8 when the composer takes the Smith Theatre stage to perform with the Lark String Quartet.

Music lovers attending Candlelight Concerts' presentation of the world-renowned Guarneri String Quartet next month in Columbia will see something audiences haven't witnessed or heard since the extraordinary ensemble began concertizing. They will experience a Guarneri Quartet in flux. After an unprecedented 36-year run at the pinnacle of the chamber music world with their original personnel intact, violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley and violist Michael Tree will take to the Smith Theatre stage Dec. 2 with a new cellist in tow. David Soyer, whose energetic yet unfailingly elegant cello playing has anchored the voluptuous Guarneri sound for nearly four decades, has elected to cut back on his travel schedule during this 2000-2001 season.

SAN FRANCISCO - David Harrington, a 48-year old violinist with the serious, sleep-deprived look and conversational urgency a late-blooming adolescent, is the founder and designated visionary of the Kronos Quartet, but that's not exactly how he describes himself."

Diversity will be in the air tomorrow night when the Candlelight Concert Society presents the New Zealand String Quartet in a program of two of the most beloved string quartets in Western music plus a piece for string quartet and taonga puoro (Maori instruments made from gourds). The program, at 8 p.m. in Smith Theatre at Howard Community College, sandwiches Hine-pu-te-hue (the name of the Maori goddess of peace) between Haydn's String Quartet, Op. 76, No. 4 ("Sunrise") and Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 132. event begins at 6:45 p.m. Information: 410-480-9950, or www.candlelightconcerts.

String quartet -- Sundays At Three Chamber Music Series will present a performance by the Washington String Quartet (above) of works by Mozart, Barber and Mendelssohn at 2 p.m. Sunday at Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Road, Columbia. Tickets are $15; $10 for unaccompanied full-time students. Anyone to age 18 is admitted free when accompanied by an adult. 410-992-0145 or www.SundaysAtThree.org.