String quartets of the two comrades Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn formed bookends on Friday evening at the Weill Recital Hall as the Philharmonia Quartett Berlin framed exceptional renditions of two modern masterpieces as part of the Berlin in Lights Festival.

“Five Movements for String Quartet” by Anton Webern got off to a false start, violist Neithard Resa stopping play after just a few seconds in order to retune, but the foursome produced an elegant, thought-provoking realization once they got going in earnest. Clearly, much rehearsal time went into this micromanaged version — tempos even within measures varied expertly — but such attention to detail sometimes sacrificed the larger visceral excitement of the music itself, particularly in the third movement.

Webern taps into the rhythmical experiments of Schubert, especially those of the late piano sonatas. The observation that the work comes from the “heart of darkest Austria” seems particularly perceptive. In the Five Movements from 1909, he negates the concept of linear time by fashioning a much longer first piece that introduces sections of extreme brevity — one of the movements is only 13 measures, another but 14. In order to make this aphoristic music communicative, the players must be adept at phrasing on a miniature scale. The Berliners were able to handle all of the unusual effects, such as ponticello and pizzicato, with ease. A colorful and refined performance, if not a particularly exciting one.

It has now been sufficiently long for others to venerate the Austrian miniaturist as an important link in our cultural history. Although Gyorgy Kurtag pays direct honor to one of his teachers in his microludes, he perhaps more significantly discloses a reverence for the techniques of Webern, the last great serialist. The 12 aphoristic pieces for string quartet, titled “Hommage à Mihály András,” form a sort of ludus atonalis as they progress by half steps through the chromatic scale from C to B. Reminiscent of Webern in many respects, particularly the tentative flutter-tonguing of his “Six Bagatelles,” this music was given an intense reading.

When the Emerson String Quartet presented these dozen little gems at Carnegie Hall in 2001, it gave a straightforward and clean performance, but without much emotional content. By contrast, the Berliners delved deeply into the subtext of these tiny sketches, and produced moments of great tenderness and poignancy. In their hands, the snatches of melody seemed more like memories, the very phenomenon for which Kurtag was striving.

The group was founded by section leaders of the larger Berlin Philharmonic, and now includes Daniel Stabrawa and Christian Stadelmann, violins, and Jan Diesselhorst, cello, besides Mr. Resa. The night ended with the “A Major Quartet” of Schumann, one of the five incredible works of chamber music that the obsessive-compulsive composer produced in a oneyear period during which he wrote in virtually no other forms. And the evening began with some youthful Mendelssohn, the “A Minor Quartet, Op. 13,” sometimes subtitled “Ist es wahr” after a snippet of text from one of his early songs. The blending of the quartet was masterful, making the music of an 18-year-old seem perhaps more fruitful and ripe than the printed score might indicate.

Particularly impressive was the ensemble’s version of the “Adagio non lento,” a warm and beautiful interlude leading to quite a passionate extended conversation, and the “Intermezzo,” a bright and airy visit to a country glade. Mendelssohn was a compositional prodigy who really never fully developed his potential, and his early works are replete with this type of music that seems just a few notches of sophistication below greatness. It is always rewarding to revisit these manuscripts from the attic, but rare to hear one of them so lovingly realized.

* * *

There are approximately as many different ways to perform “L’Histoire du Soldat” as there are to cook an egg. It can be presented with a dancer, a narrator, a complement of actors, a reciter who takes all of the parts, or even with no extraneous personnel in the suite that Stravinsky fashioned for concert performance. What was especially interesting about the Berlin Philharmonic Ensemble’s rendition on Thursday evening at the University Settlement House on the Lower East Side was that the assignment of tasks was dictated by necessity.

The septet of instruments was originally suggested to the composer because the year was 1918 and there was a severe shortage of competent musicians due to the Great War. In fact, Stravinsky premiered the theater piece in Switzerland, with each instrument encouraged to do yeoman duty under trying conditions. It is just this sparse instrumentation that gives the work its unique charm, a chilling separation of individual sounds unlike any music written previously.

The University Settlement has a regular performing arts component and so was able to provide a good room for this Berlin in Lights neighborhood event. The crowd filled all of the seats and also much of the floor space, with a noticeable number of young children in attendance. The Berliners performed expertly, producing spectral sounds as appropriate, creating clean synaptic spaces between notes, and handling Stravinsky’s quicksilver mood changes adroitly.

Canadian Stanley Dodds was the narrator and also the violinist. Because he was the only native English speaker in the group, he took on the storytelling duties. It was an impossible task, however, to not only move the narrative along but also navigate this extremely difficult fiddle part. As a result, Mr. Dodds was sometimes tentative on both ends. He deserves full credit for pluck, but he is undoubtedly a much more accomplished violinist than an actor.

The musical side of the performance, though, was infectiously exciting. There is a lot of toe-tapping music in this bizarre tale, and bassist Martin Heinze, bassoonist Marion Reinhard, and percussionist Franz Schindlbeck were a powerfully insistent rhythm section. Clarinetist Wenzel Fuchs and trombonist Stefan Schulz were virtually flawless in their parts.

“The Royal March” is perhaps the greatest music Stravinsky ever wrote, and those not familiar with the classics might still recognize this hauntingly unhinged melody as an oft quoted refrain in the more serious essays of rocker Frank Zappa, who himself once performed the role of the reciter at the Hollywood Bowl. In any case, trumpeter Tamas Velenczei intoned it at a new level of eloquence. This is simply one of those moments that brass players dream about — somewhat like playing the horn calls in a Wagnerian “Ring” opera — and Mr. Velenczei really nailed it.

Some of us are at sixes and sevens with the music of Igor Stravinsky, but he truly struck gold with “The Soldier’s Tale.” There was something remarkably gritty about this current Berlin performance, perhaps enhanced a bit by the raggedness of the neighborhood. As the last measures of solo percussion died away, it was clear that we had all experienced something quite memorable.