The DaPonte String Quartet kicks off its 25th winter season with a concert that ranges from Mozart to modern. “Running a Ground,” will be performed six times, in Damariscotta, Rockport, Boothbay Harbor, Portland, Gardiner and Brunswick from Nov. 4-20.

The Damariscotta performance on Friday, Nov. 4 at 7:30 p.m. will be held at the Lincoln Theater and the Boothbay Harbor performance will be held at St. Columba's Episcopal Church, 32 Emery Way on Saturday, Nov. 12 at 4 p.m.

For their three concert winter series, the Quartet has replaced its usual Thomaston venue with a brand new location—the Rockport Opera House. “It was time to move to a bigger hall,” says Executive Director Amy MacDonald. “The Opera House is perfect—a historic building with modern, accessible and comfortable seating, located right in the heart of the village.”  She added that the concert in Gardiner was not part of their regular winter series but a one-off presented by Johnson Hall Theater.

“Running a Ground” features final Mozart’s string quartet, No. 23 in F Major,  as well as contemporary American composer John Heiss’s “Microscosms” and Russian great Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F Major.

Mozart’s final quartet "seems to mingle the bliss and sorrow of a farewell to life,” musicologist Alfred Einstein wrote. “How beautiful life has been! How sad! How brief!" Heiss’s Microcosms, written precisely 225 years later and just 10 minutes long, has the depth of late Beethoven quartets, while being witty and whimsical as well. Prokofiev considered his Quartet No. 2 to be “an extremely turbulent success”—in one case quite literally, as a 1942 performance was interrupted by a Nazi air raid.

Tickets are $20 are available at www.DaPonte.org, at Sherman’s Books in Damariscotta and Boothbay Harbor, Longfellow Books in Portland, Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, or at 529-4555.