The scholar Michael Spitzer, in a recent book entitled “Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven’s Late Style,” amplifies the point, saying of the first movement of Opus 127, “Each of the movement’s ostensible eccentricities actually has a precedent in Classical practice.” The Brentano players underlined such subtleties throughout. As Steinberg observed, in remarks from the stage, the quartet begins with emphatic, maestoso music in E-flat major, the key of Beethoven’s revolutionary, middle-period “Eroica” Symphony. Then, in the sixth bar, the heroic fades into something much more intimate and introspective. The maestoso chords return twice more, but after an expectant bar of silence they don’t appear again, and the inward mood prevails, setting the stage for the great fifteen-minute Adagio that is the heart of the piece. The Brentano managed to convey the fascinating discontinuities in the music without stinting on the fundamental eloquence of Beethoven’s hymnal writing. And, at the end of the Adagio, Steinberg rendered the closing solo in touchingly elegant, sweet-toned fashion—a case of a formula that somehow takes on transcendent meaning.

The Brentano String Quartet will perform with Peter Serkin, piano and Richard Lalli, baritone at the Y in December.