Why violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Tereza Stanislav, violist Jonathan Moerschel and cellist Eric Byers bill themselves as the Calder Quartet, we do not know. They acknowledge only that the name honors Alexander Calder, the American sculptor who raised the lowly mobile to the condition of high art — but where’s the connection? In the hands of great composers, the string quartet has for centuries been the vehicle for their deepest and most intimate thought. Trailing lavish praise from the mainland’s most demanding critics, the Calder alights at the MACC this week with prime Mozart (K. 387, the “Spring” quartet) and Beethoven (Op. 127, first of his revered “late” quartets). Sandwiched in between is the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg’s recent hazily introspective “Kongsgaard Variation” (2006), a quarter-hour meditation from which materializes, like an autumn sunset, the heartbreaking Arietta that forms the theme of the final movement of Beethoven’s last piano Sonata, Op. 111. — Calder Quartet, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s McCoy Studio Theater. Tickets: $40-$50.

Matthew Gurewitsch comes to Hawaii from three decades in New York as a cultural commentator for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other media. Browse his archive at beyondcriticism.com.