The story of the composer Ernst von Dohnanyi, whose mighty opus one was presented Sunday at the Kosciuszko Foundation, is a strange combination of mystery and frustration.

Pianist Roman Markowicz led a hard-driving account of Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet in C minor in partnership with the Cassatt String Quartet of Syracuse University. It is not as though Dohnanyi led an unproductive life. He was, in fact, a notable academic who ended his career at Florida State University but his great compositional career never materialized.

The quintet is evocatively Brahmsian, not only Romantic in phrasing but also quite thick in texture, sounding in many spots like orchestral music. The group (Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower, violins, Michiko Oshima, viola, and Nicole Johnson, cello) really dug into this piece, investing it with a great deal of febrile passion. Any technical shortcomings were minimized by dedicated music making.

Especially impressive were the pacing of the opening Allegro, Mr. Markowicz’s unyielding sense of propulsion, and a very noble and memorable Finale. Also, the viola solo in the Adagio was quite lovely. This rendition made it clear why many, including Brahms, expected great things from the 18-year-old. Less understandable is his later stagnation, but there is a lesson for critics here: Making predictions is a really bad idea.

On their own, the musicians were less satisfying. Only a fool would argue that there are greater works in the string quartet genre than those of Beethoven, but for sheer beauty of sound and innovative blending of sonorities, give me Maurice Ravel’s Quartet in F Major any day. This was a brave choice, and the group’s diligence should be applauded, but their individual and consequent combined tones did not sufficiently convey the gorgeous qualities of this piece. But, as in the Dohnanyi, they were totally committed and achieved a level of energy often missing from the play of some of their more celebrated colleagues.

Many a quartet has gone off the rails in Ravel’s Assez vif, Tres rythme movement because of its highly complex demands of coordinated pizzicato. Oddly, these current practioners were actually quite precise in their pluckings, and often sounded like one voice rather than a parade of stragglers. The group’s undoing, though, was that its individual pizzicato technique was often fuzzy, creating many unwanted lingering notes and overtones reminiscent of blues writing. There are several works of Ravel that depend on the jazz or blues style, but this quartet is definitely not one of them.

Since this was, after all, the Kosciuszko Foundation, Mr. Markowicz offered a little Polish music, specifically the Etude in B flat minor and two mazurkas of … no, not Chopin, but rather Karol Szymanowski. Born to tremendous wealth, this dear friend of Artur Rubinstein had the luxury of total immersion in his art and the result for posterity is a richly varied and superbly colored, if neglected, repertoire. Mr. Markowicz made a strong case for its acceptance, particularly in his communication of that slightly off center-rhythmic style of the mazurkas. At the end of the day, I wished for more of this pianism.

Portions of this concert will be broadcast over WQXR Sunday, January 28.

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Given their ubiquity on the New York concert scene, harmonica concertos may be growing a bit tiresome, but allow me to relate the details of an excellent performance at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday evening in which the Riverside Symphony invited soloist Robert Bonfiglio to perform the final composition of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Villa-Lobos was a charming raconteur and a bit of a gadfly in 20th-century music. His most famous set of pieces is the Bachianas brasileiras, which combines the ordered cleanliness and counterpoint of Bach with the exciting rhythms of South America. He wrote over a thousand works in all sorts of forms both popular and classical, was an ardent ethnomusicologist who collected material in the heart of Amazonia, and once claimed he had been captured by cannibals who put him in a stewpot, only to release him after he sang his music to them. His piano pieces for Artur Rubinstein made him famous throughout the classical world. And at the very end of his long life, he created the Harmonica Concerto for an American named John Sebastian.

The piece begins in medias res with a great deal of energy. Mr. Bonfiglio brings much energy to the stage and demonstrated this night a great deal of conversance with the piece, making a strong case for his signature role as its champion.

The middle Andante is especially beautiful with a powerfully lush orchestration. The orchestra is an equal partner in this movement and executed quite well, combining their relatively small size with a great deal of romantic, full-bodied sound. There is always the hint of the exotic in Villa-Lobos and conductor George Rothman captured it here with unhurried chordal accompaniment.

Mr. Bonfiglio takes the final Allegro faster than he did when he made his recording and this works well, as the newfound propulsion emphasizes the dance rhythms of this section. Villa-Lobos resists the contemporary urge to gild the rhythmic lily with a load of percussion instruments, employing instead but a few judicious strokes of the timpani as he allows the music to develop organically. I’m afraid I don’t know my Portuguese, but in Spanish Latin America this music might be classified as ranchero style.

Elsewhere, the orchestra offered a somewhat rough-hewn version of Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony, notable for its muscular sound and raw power. No mealy-mouthed periodicity for this band, but rather straightforward phrasing that sometimes seemed a bit inelegant yet always conveyed the enthusiasm of the composer. Mozart is often treated as a hothouse flower and many supposedly refined performances are really just polite distillations short on emotion. Mr. Rothman made his Mozart seem more like later Beethoven, brassy and percussive, muddy boots and all. The lovely Symphony No. 4 of Arthur Honegger, subtitled “The Delights of Basel,” rounded out the program.

As became clear at the end of the concert when prospective buyers stormed the table where Mr. Bonfiglio’s CD was for sale, the near capacity audience was genuinely enthralled with the novelty and impact of Villa-Lobos.