For Eli Spindel, bringing chamber music to the Catskills is about more than putting on a few concerts.

Spindel, a conductor, violinist and founder of the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, is launching the Headwaters Chamber Music Festival this weekend at the Claryville Reformed Church, near the headwaters of the Neversink River.

For its first season, Spindel has chosen a theme that connects the music to the outdoors: “Hunting and Fishing.”

“I sort of cheekily named the theme hunting and fishing. One of the pieces we’re doing is Mozart’s ‘Hunt Quartet’ and the other is Schubert’s ‘Trout Quintet,’ which is a piece that he wrote based on his own song and the words of the song are about a fisherman kind of using dirty tricks to catch fish and how the the sort of narrator of the poem disapproves of it,” Spindel said.

The Saturday program pairs Schubert’s “Trout Quintet” with Bach’s Piano Concerto in D minor. The Mozart quartet on Sunday has become known as the “Hunt” Quartet because of rhythms that evoke 18th-century hunting calls.

Sunday’s program also features Dvorak’s “American” Quartet. Spindel says Dvorak drew inspiration from the natural world during his time in the United States, including a visit to a Bohemian community in Iowa.

Spindel says the festival is starting small. Eventually, he would like to commission new works inspired by the natural world.

But even getting the first concerts onstage has required some logistical work. The festival is renting a piano from Poughkeepsie, with a tuner scheduled to prepare it. And because the musicians live in different places and have busy schedules, the ensemble has not rehearsed together.

“We’re going to rehearse all day Friday and all day Saturday and then we’ll have the concert on Saturday. We’ll rehearse again Sunday morning and then we’ll have the second concert on Sunday. So, it’s it’s going to be full on,” Spindel said.

There’s another first for Spindel: He’ll be performing viola.

“I have never performed in public on the viola before,” he said. “But I do play the viola privately and this is my big debut.”

The concerts are Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Claryville Reformed Church.