While many museums do keep their million-dollar instruments out of musicians’ hands, the history museum brings its out for more than a dozen concerts every year. (When not in use, they’re stored in climate-controlled lockers.)

The next performances, on Saturday and Sunday, will feature instruments by master luthier Antonio Stradivari and by his teacher, Nicolo Amati, played by members of the Smithsonian’s Axelrod String Quartet and the Excelsa Quartet, which is currently the graduate fellowship string quartet at the University of Maryland.

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“We’re playing Mendelssohn’s Octet on four Strads and four Amatis, and those instruments all have such a rich, warm tone,” says Clopton, Excelsa’s cellist. “I think it’s going to sound unbelievable when you hear them all together.”

That is, if the musicians can master the instruments’ tricky sheep-gut strings.

“They can squawk really quickly when your bow doesn’t hit them just right,” Clopton says.

Slowik could put modern metal strings — louder, brighter and less finicky — on the 17th- and 18th-century instruments, but that would be counter to the goals of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society.

“We want you to hear the instruments much like they would have sounded when they were made,” he says.

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Some concessions have been made to modernity, however. The players will use their own bows, which are stiffer and longer than baroque bows, and the cellos have been fitted with endpins, whereas they previously would have been squeezed rather precariously between a player’s knees.

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That’s one update Clopton is particularly thankful for, as she contemplates the possibility of losing her grip on the Amati cello she’ll be playing this weekend.

“It’s terrifying,” she says. “It’s a really frightening experience, having an instrument like that handed to you.”

National Museum of American History, 1400 Constitution Ave. NW; Sat. & Sun., 6:30 p.m., $31. Concert cancelled due to inclement weather.