The last great work written in the 19th century was delivered in an unusual version Wednesday evening as the KLR trio offered Arnold Schoenberg’s iridescent string sextet “Transfigured Night” in an arrangement for its particular grouping of instruments.

Eduard Steuermann made a career, if not a fortune, touring the globe performing the knotty piano compositions of his friend Schoenberg. He gave the world-premiere performance of his master’s Piano Concerto, was his frequent guest in California, and recorded the piano part of Pierrot Lunaire under Schoenberg himself. He also tutored a young Israeli pianist in New York named Joseph Kalichstein.

In order to proselytize for Schoenberg, Steuermann needed material he could take on the road. Like Franz Liszt teaching the world about Verdi and Bellini through his opera paraphrases at the keyboard, Steuermann presented his mentor’s most accessible work, Verklaerte Nacht, to a wider public in this 1928 arrangement for piano trio. Although Schoenberg’s name has become synonymous with astringent modernism, he grew up an ardent romantic, even performing as a cellist in a Viennese ensemble with the king of schmaltz himself, Fritz Kreisler.

This performance of the transfigured transcription was filled with passion, white-hot in its perfumed utterances. The original poem by Richard Dehmel is very steamy, and addresses the idea of bearing a child out of wedlock. In the incestuous world of fin de siècle Vienna, the same woman who inspired this original story also was the model for another poet, Stefan George, who wrote a collection of pieces about her, which Schoenberg later set for voice and piano as “The Book of the Hanging Gardens.”

As expected, the piano takes a major share of the rhythm and harmony while the violin and cello either re-create their original solo parts or, somewhat less successfully, attempt to copy the sound of multiple strings. Mr. Kalichstein was totally invested in this performance and provided a solid grounding for the soaring of his partners, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson. Sometimes Mr. Steuermann is guilty of revisionist history, and makes the music more dissonant than it was intended to be. Overall, though, this was an exciting and revelatory arrangement. Mr. Laredo, with his superb vibrato, sounded as delicious as the work’s original violinist, Arnold Rose, a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic and brother-in-law of Gustav Mahler, reportedly did.

Also on the program was another arrangement — one shrouded in mystery. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach composed a fugue for keyboard, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arranged it for string trio, but the accompanying prelude in F minor may or may not have been written by Mozart, and there is no evidence it was envisioned by this particular son of Bach. While the fugue is impressively and expressively nimble, the prelude is so melodically inventive that it would seem to be the brainchild of Mozart.

Michael Tree, violist of the Guarneri Quartet, joined for this performance, which was remarkable for its clarity and notable for its gravitas and its richness of blended sound.

Mr. Tree and KLR ended the evening with a lovely rendition of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E Flat Major. It is generally agreed that Schumann was an obsessive-compulsive. It is undeniable that he composed music almost exclusively in groups, writing in the one fertile year of 1842 all three of his marvelous string quartets; the mighty Piano Quintet, the first such piece of its kind in music history; and this extraordinarily melodic quartet. One might conclude that he was happy that year, but in actuality, he suffered the depths of depression, a phenomenon quite noticeable in this poignant essay.

This performance was just terrific. Lively as required, dexterous and diaphanous in the Mendelssohnian Scherzo, utterly heartbreaking in the Andante cantabile, the main theme of which is the most beautiful tune Schumann, a master songsmith, ever penned. That theme is first given to the cello and Ms. Robinson made the most of it, intoning rather slowly, sweetly but declaratively, and with majestic breadth. Mr. Laredo’s reprise was, quite correctly, more romantic, more pulsating, but also more compressed. When the cello returns with the theme at the end of the movement, it is supported harmonically in an entirely new and ravishing manner. Simply gorgeous music making, almost transfigured.