Two weeks ago, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, one of the greatest symphonic groups in the world, played to a half-full concert hall at the Maine Center for the Arts. People are still talking about the event, and the question that comes up the most often is: Why wasn’t the hall overflowing with concertgoers?

On a smaller scale, the dearth of audience members was repeated at a concert given by the Anderson Quartet Saturday night at the Maine Center. The group, which takes its name from American contralto Marian Anderson, has been together less than five years, but has achieved an impressive amount of recognition and prestige in that period. The members have spent two summers studying together in France and, in 1991, won the coveted Cleveland Quartet Competition, which granted them scholarships to the Eastman School of Music, in New York, and made them the first all-black musical ensemble to win a major competition.

More recently, the Anderson Quartet performed at President Clinton’s inaugural celebration where countless people heard their rich and fresh blends of classical sounds.

But on Saturday night, fewer than 300 of the hall’s 1,600 seats were filled for the local performance. Because so many were empty, director John Patches invited everyone to move closer to the stage. Nearly everyone did move forward, which created an intimacy and closeness difficult to achieve — even with chamber music — in a place as large as the Maine Center. And the unsual combination of three women and one man (if anything, those numbers are predominantly reversed in the music world) made the event all the more fascinating.

Such a small turn out worked to the advantage of Saturday’s participants. They could nearly reach out and touch musicians Marianne Henry, Marisa McLeod, Diedra Lawrence and Michael Cameron as they spiritedly played Franz Joseph Haydn’s prankish Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 33 No. 2.

Up close, the audience saw the intensity of concentration required for a tremendously successful rendition of Dimitri Shostakovich’s mind-boggling mix of mystery and revelation in Quartet No. 8, Op. 110. As fingers pressed out the notes on the necks, and bows floated above the bellies of the stringed instruments, the audience sat motionless — mystified by the music, mesmerized by the fusion of atonal sounds.

A sweetly adroit version of Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet in D Major, Op. 44 No. 1 ended the program, which was generally first-rate for a group as newly established as the Anderson Quartet. Although no one could contest the high standards of artistry expressed by the musicians, it’s likely that the standing ovation had more to do with the audience wanting to make up for a lack of bodies in the hall than with an outstanding performance. The Anderson Quartet must have been discouraged by the meager attendance, but heartened by the warm appreciation — an unfortunate combination which seems to be a trend for classical music events at the Maine Center these days.