Wednesday night at Alice Tully Hall, there was more passion from Osvaldo Golijov. As you may know, Great Performers is doing a monthlong festival,”The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov.” Presumably, they got the title from Mr. Golijov’s “Pasion segun San Marcos” (“Passion According to St. Mark”), a great liturgical hit from the year 2000. As you may also know, Mr. Golijov is a composer born to an Eastern European Jewish family in Argentina; he has lived in the United States for two decades.

The concert on Wednesday night was played by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, a very fine ensemble.The first half of the program was all Golijov; the second half brought us Schubert.

Beginning the evening was “Yiddishbbuk,” a work written for the SLSQ in 1992. A modernist affair, it is in three relatively short movements, and each of those movements carries a dedication: the first to three children confined at Theresienstadt; the second to Isaac Bashevis Singer; and the third to Leonard Bernstein. According to the program notes, the work is meant to be “a meditation on and reflection of the Jewish diaspora’s long and often anguished journey through the 20th century.”

That’s a tall order!

The first movement makes an impact: violent, alarmed, becoming a fast, nervous dance. The second movement is not dissimilar. It’s bleak, ghostly; then it turns insistent and repetitive (in a compelling way). The third movement is full of wails, and full of fear. To me, this does not exactly scream “Lenny!” But Mr. Golijov has his own conceptions.

Indeed, the whole of “Yiddishbbuk” sounds to me like a Holocaust piece – and a good one. But that is not the plan.

The SLSQ played the work with all its heart and energy. And their ensem bleship – their unity and cohesion – was exemplary.

Next on the program was “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind.” Who was this gentleman, or who is he? A key figure from the Kabbalah, who lived in France. This piece, written in 1994, finds Mr. Golijov in a much different mood: more relaxed, more tonal, more folk-like. According to those program notes, Mr. Golijov considers this work “a kind of history of Judaism.” A kind, yes.

It brings us dances and songs and broodings and other meanderings. Sometimes it breaks into full klezmer cry.

Klezmer? “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” not only calls for string quartet, but also for a clarinetist. Or rather, a player of many clarinets. Wednesday night’s guest artist, Todd Palmer, had a whole collection with him. And he knew what to do with those instruments, too.

Don’t be fooled by the white-bread name,Todd Palmer: This fellow doesn’t play like a gentile. He played with a delicious authenticity, which means that he found the right ethnic flavoring without becoming a parody. As he has proven in various pieces – many of them modern – Mr. Palmer is a formidable musician.

And the SLSQ played with that same heart, and energy, and devotion to the score.

About that score: It is often beautiful, and often interesting, but it’s not economical. I believe this piece goes on too long for its own good.The pianist – and transcriber, and abbreviator – Earl Wild has observed, “Music should say what it has to say, and get off the stage.”Mr.Golijov’s work is reluctant to get off the stage. Nonetheless, it is a high example of Jewish music.

Is Jewish music the work of a Jewish composer? Of course not. Nothing Jewish about “Maria.”

After intermission, we had Schubert’s great Quintet in C major, D. 956. Those program notes had Mr. Golijov saying that “Schubert is my most beloved composer, period.” Further, “I think Schubert was the first to write music as a theater of aural visions.” This is the kind of talk that makes the hearts of the music biz go pitter-pat.

A theater of aural visions or not, D. 956 is a work of almost unfathomable sublimity. You may recall the somewhat creepy fact that Artur Rubinstein, the late pianist, wished to die to this music. Whether he arranged that, I’m not sure.

Joining the SLSQ for this work was the cellist David Finckel, a member of the Emerson String Quartet (and also, with his wife, the pianist Wu Han, coartistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center). The usual problem in performing D. 956 is that players approach it with too much reverence, too much awe. They forget to play it. Happily, this was not a problem on Wednesday night. Indeed, the group’s tempo in the first movement – Allegro ma non troppo – was a little fast.

They did not play this movement with great beauty of sound, or smoothness of execution; they were actually on the gritty side. But it must be said that the first cellist, Christopher Costanza, contributed much beauty, especially later in the movement.

The ensuing Adagio featured gobs of portamento (sliding around), from everybody. This was slightly annoying – but only slightly. There was also some amazing, arresting soft playing in this movement.

On the whole, this performance was very well judged, a performance worthy of the work itself – which, as we have suggested, is saying something.