One of the casualties of the mindless pursuit of the new and trendy in classical music has been the tried and true orchestral formula of overture, concerto, and symphony. But in the world of chamber music, a scaled down version of this format still holds sway. Especially when the core group is a string quartet, there is more often than not a guest artist for one piece.

On Wednesday evening at Alice Tully Hall, under the aegis of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Borromeo Quartet (Nicholas Kitchen and William Fedkenheuer, violins; Mai Motobuchi, viola; and Yeesun Kim, cello) presented just such a traditional program. With guest pianist Jonathan Biss on hand, the structure of the concert made perfect sense, especially since the two featured works, Robert Schumann’s mighty Piano Quintet and Arnold Schonberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, were intensely orchestral in nature.

The overture, if you will, was one of those throwaway pieces by Igor Stravinsky, this one titled Concertino for String Quartet. All this music contains is six minutes of jazz rhythms with absolutely no sense of melodic invention. The composer wrote it for a quartet that wanted to sound up to the minute; it might have been the cat’s pajamas in 1920, but simply sounded dated this night.

Much more satisfying was Schumann’s Piano Quintet, which he certainly conceived of in orchestral terms. The writing is thick and dense, and inspired Johannes Brahms’s symphonic Opus 34 for the same combination of instruments. (Having Clara Schumann as a soloist also contributed to the conception of this piano concerto manque.)

Once I recovered from the surprisingly thin tone of the Borromeo, I settled in for a good performance of this towering work. Odd about that tone, as at least two of the four individuals exhibited a more accomplished sound when given a chance to perform solo. Ms. Motobuchi seemed to possess the warmest sound, echoing the cello in spots and, as often happens in Schumann, finishing its thoughts. Mr. Kitchen was highly expressive, with a touching vibrato when intoning on his own, but turned into just another fiddler when blending with his mates. Perhaps they simply need better instruments.

Errors and excesses were engendered by the quartet’s enthusiasm, and the phenomenon extended to the audience members, who applauded and even yelled “bravo” after the scherzo (which is not the end of the piece). Mr. Biss, however, provided a secure grounding and a welcome sense of restraint that seemed to calm the strings. A sense of the mysterious and a notably fragile beauty also were conveyed in the “un poco largamente” section of the second movement.

When Schonberg wrote his D minor Quartet, a full-blown symphony dressed in only the flimsiest of disguises, he was the same age – about 30 – as Schumann was when he composed his quintet. The Borromeo players are also approximately this age and caught the spirit of this passionate work expertly, almost intuitively.

At the time, Schonberg was caught in the grip of fin-de-siecle elephantiasis: Everything was conceived in the largest possible terms, and he was enthralled by Max Reger, whose chamber music is the thickest in the repertoire. There is much tension in the D minor Quartet, including sexual tension, and for a performance to be successful, the players must grasp the composer’s sense of narrative communication.

The Borromeo’s realization should be praised for its accuracy and sweeping scope. My only quibble is a stylistic one. The work is a quintessential example of late Romanticism, but these people performed it like … Schonberg. This type of angular emphasis, although forward-looking in its own right, is too early in the composer’s remarkable journey; in 1905, he was still three years away from, as the text of his second string quartet states, “feeling the air of another planet.”

But any small shortcomings were swallowed in the magic of this evening. This is a group that plays with a high degree of commitment and passion, rare qualities in their elders. It was especially heartening to observe so many youthful audience members and feel the electricity of their appreciation. There is a buzz at these gatherings that makes me hopeful that the future of music is safe from the assault of the mediocre, which is the curse of our media-dominated age. Upon reflection, I would rather attend this type of concert than any run-of-the-mill night with a big orchestra.