Franz Joseph Haydn wrote hundreds and hundreds of compositions in a long and fruitful career, but he considered two of them to be far superior to the others. One was the mighty oratorio “The Creation.” The other work was a series of seven adagios for orchestra written in 1787 for the archbishop of Cadiz, to be played as musical interludes during the reading of homilies.

Haydn transcribed the pieces for string quartet as “The Seven Last Words of the Savior on the Cross,” but never totally solved the puzzle of presenting seven highly contemplative slow movements as an integrated whole. The composer admitted that he was concerned that the listener’s attention might drift. During this current Lenten season, on Sunday afternoon, four dedicated string players offered their own solution to this thorny problem, aboard Bargemusic.

Isadore Cohen was the violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio for so many years that most everyone assumes that he was a founding member. Actually, that honor went to Daniel Guilet. Although Mr. Cohen was not a particular favorite of mine (I often found his romanticism dangerously close to sentimentalism), he was part of the ensemble when it earned a top-tier, international reputation. Now immersed in the much more important role of the teacher and assuming the mentor’s seat as second violinist, he presented three of his charges: Aaron Boyd on violin, Maurycy Banaszek on viola, and Priscilla E. Lee on cello.

The work is somewhat unfamiliar – this was its maiden voyage aboard the barge – and so a little parsing may be in order. The “words” are actually phrases and each inspired the composer to fashion an adagio in a different manner.

“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” introduces the piece with the full power of Sturm und Drang. This particular quartet was extremely emotive in this section, strongly supported by Ms. Lee. “Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” is elegiac and sweet, relying on a full-bodied violin sound which was difficult for Mr. Boyd, despite his technical dexterity, to muster. “Woman, behold thy son” alternates between an imbedded lullaby and a harder-edged stridency. This movement featured Mr. Cohen and his warm blending with Mr. Banaszek.

“My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is perhaps not what the listener might expect. It’s a gentle and ethereal resolution of the feelings of abandonment. The group performed angelically in this movement and, this being a sunny afternoon concert on the water, the gulls gathered in large numbers right on cue to add a glorious bit of the spiritual symbolism of the bestiary to the proceedings.

“I thirst” continues the transmogrification process with a combination of anguish and resolution. The group captured just the right spirit of conflict in this movement, although their somewhat thin sound had begun to wear on me by this point. The pizzicato entrance of “It is finished” exposed some of the technical weaknesses of the ensemble. The illusion of the ticking clock was thrown into serious jeopardy by Mr. Cohen’s irregular rhythms.

“Into Thy hands I commend My spirit” brings the music full circle as a reprise of intensity and power. Here the quartet was more secure – like many young performers, they are much better at loud and exciting parts than soft and ruminative ones – and ended the experience quite dramatically.

Haydn added a concert finale for this adaptation, called “The Earthquake.” It is a short and highly concentrated explanation point evocative of Tintoretto’s “Last Judgment.” Here the four string players were deeply dug in, producing so dense a swirling vortex that it felt as if the earth were moving below our feet. But this might have had something to do with the fact that we were on water at the time.

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In November 1954 Leonard Bernstein appeared on the television program “Omnibus” standing on a gigantic score of the Symphony No. 5 of Beethoven and pointing to the opening four notes with his shoe. Bernstein illustrated his talk at the piano and by having members of the Symphony of the Air play passages while seated at their particular line on the manuscript, with the camera shooting from high in the studio rafters.

CBS was impressed and booked this born communicator to present his series of Young People’s Concerts from Carnegie Hall, which remained on the air until 1973. Bernstein discussed sophisticated topics – What is Classical Music? What Does Music Mean? What is Rhythm? – discovering that by not talking down to his youthful audience he could introduce complex concepts. One lecture on Mahler included a performance of the last movement of the Symphony No. 4 – almost unknown at the time – and he beamed as his children sat in rapt attention.

On Saturday afternoon, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s presented Bernstein’s daughter Jaime, who has made a bit of a cottage industry out of this type of family concert, on his former stage. Ms. Bernstein began with a marvelous deconstruction of the second half of the Symphony No. 4 of Tchaikovsky. Her rather sophisticated topic was the relationship between dynamics and tempo. I couldn’t help thinking that many current maestros – Michael Tilson Thomas came readily to mind – could have benefited from her explanation as to which passages to play loud and which soft. Conductor Michael Barrett and St. Luke’s played an example of what happens if every musician comes in at a slightly different moment; everyone laughed, but was I the only one thinking of the New York Philharmonic?

The highlight of the afternoon was an exquisite performance of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth. The musicians performed the piece sensitively and with a transparency of sound that confirmed my feeling that this orchestra is severely underrated. The young audience was positively transfixed by this gossamer music-making.

Concertmistress Eriko Sato dazzled in a breakneck performance of the Erixymachus section of Bernstein’s “Serenade after Plato’s Symposium” and two of the audience members were given the singular honor of conducting the ensemble in Berlioz’s “March to the Scaffold,” Ms. Bernstein being perspicacious enough not to mention that the visions of the condemned man were engendered by opium.

Those who love “The Firebird” will realize how often it is poorly performed. Using the finale, Ms. Bernstein offered several examples of its instrumental color and deftly conveyed the difficulties of producing such transitory miracles. She also talked about that final crescendo, frequently mishandled by many of the most respected conductors of the last century, but given a spectacular performance by St. Luke’s.

I will spare the sermon this time about the paramount value of this type of convocation. Instead I will comment briefly on the deportment department. Firstly, the children gave Ms. Sato a very enthusiastic ovation when she initially emerged from the wings to tune the orchestra, rather than the halfhearted applause that normally accompanies this largely ceremonial act at “real” concerts. Secondly, a small percentage of the children behaved quite badly, talking excitedly among themselves, bobbing up and down in time to the music, performing various interpretive dances in the hallowed aisles and generally exhibiting a fractious disregard for proper concert decorum. It was glorious.