Most classical music presenters view with alarm their dwindling audiences and the frustrations of unproductive outreach.

There was a glimmer of hope last night, however, in the all-Beethoven string quartet program that launched the 51^st season of the Columbus Chamber Music Society.

The beautiful, gentle resonance of Gloria Dei Worship Center embraced and supported the sounds of the Shanghai Quartet's four fragile stringed instruments. Without deafening amplification, blinding lights or other concessions to limited attention spans, three century-and-a-half-old masterworks delivered their timeless, vital, fad-free messages to an enthusiastic, near-capacity audience.

End of polemic. The concert gave several hundred chamber music lovers a rare opportunity to compare works from each of the three periods into which scholars divide Beethoven's creative career.

The concert also presented a challenge to the performers to project the quite different aesthetic worlds of the three compositions. The Shanghai get an A-minus for that part of their effort.

The ensemble opened with the Quartet in F Minor, op. 95, named Quartett Serioso by the composer. This intense work straddles Beethoven's middle and late periods and shows aspects of each. Except for a few scrappy opening notes and fleeting rhythmic imprecision in the third movement, the ensemble was remarkably well-integrated and delivered an effective if overly aggressive interpretation.

The Quartet in D Major, op. 18, No. 3 was actually the composer's first work in the form. Already burdened by deafness, the 27 year-old nodded to Haydn and Mozart but was already his own man. The ensemble did recognize the mix.

The so-called Late Quartets are the crown jewels of the string quartet literature. They are strikingly original and expressively wide-ranging. They challenge players as well as listeners.