The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players inaugurated their summer season on Monday evening at the St. James’ Church with a jaunty quartet by Conradin Kreutzer, one of two rarities on display.

The group is a living tribute to the memory of Jens Nygaard, the quixotic and heroic founder of the full-sized Jupiter Symphony and a frontline warrior against the scourge of philistinism on the New York music scene. Mr. Nygaard held his musicians and his audience to the highest of standards and never allowed the sensationalism of userunfriendly contemporary music to darken his door. Instead, he resurrected deserving pieces from the past.

The East Hall of the church is oddly shaped for musical performance, being much wider than it is deep, a little like Orchestra Hall in Chicago. The sound is clear, if not warm, for a small ensemble and the visual impact of a dozen Louis Comfort Tiffany illuminated panels is striking. A foursome led by former Jupiter principal clarinet, Vadim Lando, traversed Kreutzer’s Quartet in E flat major.

This was a rollicking rendition, notable for crisp rhythm and good humor. Especially intriguing was the middle Andante grazioso, with the woodwind line punctuated by the strumming alla Italienne of the viola.

More interesting and a shade better performed was the Fantasia concertante Op. 256 of Carl Czerny. Known as a pedagogue and the author of those torturous finger exercises for the piano, Czerny was a fine composer, and was the subject of a recent evening by the American Symphony Orchestra. Barry Crawford was the flutist for this dramatic work of Lisztian proportions. He and his mates navigated the crazyquilt of emotions expertly, one minute tragic, the next a harlequinade of slapstick humor. Pianist Inga Kapouler caught the spirit of exaggeration for effect with impressive result.

Less satisfying, however, was Mozart’s Trio No. 4 in E major, K. 542. Here Ms. Kapouler had a rough outing, losing rhythmic flow on several occasions and never quite finding the smooth phrasing necessary for this seemingly simple yet fiendishly difficult keyboard part. Violinist Xiao-Dong Wang, also a regular in the brilliant chamber group Concertante, was uncharacteristically hesitant in his phrasing and disappointingly uneven in his normally excellent singing line. Cellist Ani Aznavoorian provided steady grounding throughout.

But a bit of a mixed bag before intermission led to a rousing finish as the string players, now including Lisa Shihoten, violin, and Dov Scheindlin and Eric Nowlin, violas, jelled nicely in Antonín Dvorÿák’s mighty Quintet in E Flat Major, sometimes known as the viola quintet because of the addition of a second alto instrument. Here all was well. Mr. Wang was in beautiful voice, his long violin line eloquent. The dyad violists, with a little help from the cello, weaved a diaphanous magical spell, especially in the achingly exquisite Larghetto, generally considered the greatest movement in all of the Bohemian master’s prodigious output.