Cellist Frederick Zlotkin had the honor of introducing the most beautiful melody ever written by Robert Schumann, the main theme of the Andante cantabile from his Piano Quartet, aboard the chamber music barge Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn’s Fulton Ferry Landing. Mr. Zlotkin is most likely tired of being described as Leonard Slatkin’s brother, so let’s introduce him instead as the son of the fine cellist Eleanor Aller. This day, he teamed with another local celebrity, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Glenn Dicterow, along with violist Karen Dreyfus and pianist Gerald Robbins.

Mr. Zlotkin made the most of his opportunity, fashioning a lyrical line notable for its fluidity and grace. He did not employ a great deal of vibrato, but did include a delicious portamento slide toward the conclusion of this infectious melody that brought to this reviewer a flood of memories and at least a trickle of tears. The other two string players each had their turn at this type of gorgeous music making and each acquitted themselves admirably.

Mr. Dicterow, who possesses an entire palette of violinistic color, seemed to make a conscious decision this day to concentrate on a brighter, more scintillating tone, an approach that cast its light on this entire performance. Most of the realization was remarkably precise, even including that wonderful effect that Schumann frequently employed in his “chamber music year” of 1842 wherein one instrument finishes a beat after all of the others. Mr. Robbins ran aground a couple of times but made quick recoveries. His enviably delicate touch more than made up for any vagaries of fingering.

The rarity on the program was the Adagio and Rondo Concertante of the then 19-year-old Schubert. Here the foursome, known collectively as the Lyric Piano Quartet, exhibited a dynamic youthful exuberance, even as some of the thematic material was less than fully fleshed-out by the youngish, but already accomplished, composer.

Although it was the third movement of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor that grew out of the aforementioned Schumann Andante cantabile, it was the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor that the quartet performed this day. The piece has a special place in the history of the California ex-pat community so dear to Mr. Zlotkin’s parents, as it was this mighty work of chamber music that Otto Klemperer convinced Arnold Schoenberg to orchestrate so that he could conduct it with his Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

Considering how dissimilar the two movements are in both spirit and structural function, it was odd that the third movement of the Brahms stood out in this current performance, just as the third movement of the Schumann had done. The quartet did an excellent job of bringing to the fore the nobility of this Andante con moto — as Schoenberg also did so adroitly with the inclusion of drums. Here in the original version, the quartet adopted a stately pace and played with a powerful, ceremonial sense of uniformity.

Overall, the Brahms was presented compellingly, although the final Rondo alla zingarese, always a crowd pleaser, was a little less swirling and twirling than it might have been. While the group very intelligently employed the full pauses written into the score that are often glossed over by others, the somewhat sauntering tempo did not lend itself to maximum impact. No matter though, as the crowd did not seem to be comparing this current version to other more exciting ones of the past in their inner ears. The last time I heard this piece on the barge, however, the entire last movement had to be encored or the enthusiastic audience would never have let those fine musicians go home.

***

The luckiest guy on the New York music scene has to be Clive Gillinson. Picked to succeed as executive director of Carnegie Hall after the untimely death of Robert Harth, Mr. Gillinson has been totally eclipsed in the press by Peter Gelb at the Metropolitan Opera and, most recently, by the specter of bad boy Gerard Mortier and his eagerly anticipated — or dreaded — takeover of the New York City Opera. Mr. Gillinson has been left in relative peace, free from the slings and arrows of critical scrutiny, and seems to be going about his duties in a methodical, if not flamboyant, manner.

One of his stated goals upon arriving in New York was the propagation of musical education and Carnegie, completely unheralded, is working assiduously in that direction. Mr. Gillinson has inherited the Academy, a joint venture with the Juilliard School that gave us a glimpse into their methods on Monday evening at the Weill Recital Hall.

The three pieces on the program, besides their 20th century origins, had in common a high degree of difficulty for solid performance. The players of the Academy uniformly did a fine job of interpretation, causing their respective coaches to concentrate on minutiae in their educative sections. First up was the Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet of the recently departed Gyorgy Ligeti, a piece that has quickly become a modern standard of the repertoire. The quintet performed the fifth miniature followed by the third and fourth without pause.

The fifth was written as a memorial tribute to Béla Bartók, and coach Frank Morelli concentrated on the difference between dynamics and tonal color. After two performances of the piece, he challenged his players not to think in terms of loud versus soft, but rather melancholy versus anger. The first note of the movement is difficult because it is designated by the composer to be quite quiet, but it immediately follows passages of double forte at the conclusion of the fourth. Rather quickly, the players adjusted to Mr. Morelli’s way of thinking and sounded much more poetic as a result.

Remember those interminable scales you had to play when you were learning the piano? Well, change them slightly to a Japanese motive and add exotic instruments and you have Nagoya Marimbas by Steve Reich. At the outset, I should mention that this is extremely demanding music for the two marimbists — this night John Ostrowski and Jared Soldiviero — and they both were extremely precise and agile. The piece, however, just seems like wallpaper, and coach Daniel Druckman had but a few helpful suggestions. What he never offered was a method to make the work pass for interesting. One of the two students — I’m afraid that I couldn’t tell who was who — hit, at one point, a wrong note. This was for me the highlight of the exercise, at least one shining moment of modulation.

The runthrough of three movements from L’Histoire du soldat of Igor Stravinsky, however, proved much more interesting. While the players offered nimble versions of The Devil’s Dance and The Little Concert, the most instantly recognizable music from the piece is “The Royal March,” with its sardonic trombone theme and filigreed and glottal trumpet accompaniment. This section was very colorfully and accurately realized by the group.