We have come a long way since the Berlin publication Germania called Alban Berg in 1925 “the poisoner of the well of German music.” Today Berg is highly respected in the opera house and his Violin Concerto can legitimately be described as beloved. In terms of acceptance and accolade, he has far outdistanced his colleagues Webern and Schonberg.

One of the supreme living advocates for his music is James Levine, who chose his rather astringent Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 13 Winds to anchor the latest effort of the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble at Zankel Hall on Sunday afternoon. Unusually, the maestro had a programmatic idea for structuring this concert: Three pairs of compositions each combining an established composer with a relative newcomer.

The performance quality of these renditions was consistently excellent. In fact, this may very well have been the best overall playing of the entire season. The first pair was Franz Schubert and John Harbison. The first chair members of the Met Orchestra – violinists David Chan and Nick Eanet, violist Michael Ouzounian, and cellist Rafael Figueroa – offered a stunningly lovely version of the Quartettensatz, a one movement treasure from that most charming of composers. These men do not play together as a string quartet, but they could and very successfully.

The Harbison was a fantasia for piano quartet entitled “November 19, 1828” and riffed on the idea that Schubert remained sentient after his ridiculously early demise. The playing was rich and deliciously blended and pianist Christopher Oldfather deserves high praise not only for his lyrical line, but also his courage for waiting a very long time before beginning the third movement Rondo while extremely loud subway trains passed.

Next up were Robert Schumann and Gyorgy Kurtag. All oboists love the three Schumann romances. They have to. They comprise the only recital work written for the instrument by a major composer from the middle of the eighteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. They can be extremely expressive in the right hands and were thus superb with oboist Eugene Izotov and pianist James Levine, who made his first appearance at the soiree. Mr. Izotov’s singing tone was especially appreciated in the middle, rather rhapsodic piece.

Kurtag’s opus was an “Hommage a R. Sch.,” consisting of five tiny pieces – some only a few seconds – for clarinet, viola and piano, and a final “Abschied” (farewell) of ten minutes or so. The second of the miniatures was an adaptation of the song ‘The delimited circle” from this same composer’s Kafka Fragments, heard on this stage this past fall.

The final farewell was Mahlerian in scope – the parallel to Das Lied von der Erde was obvious not only by its title but also by the shape of the work as a whole – and extremely eloquent in an updated romantic idiom that took a decidedly funereal spin at its conclusion, culminating with one macabre stroke of the bass drum. It is not easy to find an exceptional clarinetist who can double as a percussionist, but the Met’s Steve Williamson merged meltingly with violist Dov Scheindlin. The entire piece took advantage of that special sonorous relationship between viola and clarinet first discovered by Mozart. The Kurtag may have been in a different language, but the basic text of universal beauty and harmony needed no translation.

Finally, Gyorgy Ligeti and Alban Berg were represented by their respective chamber concertos. The Hungarian master’s work was largely an essay in dynamics, from inaudibly to audibly soft. The third “Movimento preciso e meccanico” was a very inventive pizzicato round robin, sort of a “Holiday for Strings” on LSD. Other than the number of instruments, however, there was little apparent relationship to the Berg.

This may be because the Berg is a bit of a dead end, a last gasp of Neo-Classical serialism that did not engender much of a new generation. I have always found the piece a bit cold, but playing like this might make me rethink my earlier opinion.

Once asked about Schonberg and Berg, Anton Webern replied, “Ah, the old masters!” It was heartening to see that, at least in the programming of James Levine, Alban Berg has become an honored composer emeritus.