Ariel Quartet turns in a flavorful musical ‘appetizer’

Strange but true tidbit: Some concertgoers just are not that crazy about string quartets. Yes, they do deserve our pity and our help. But even for those benighted souls, Schubert’s single-movement Quartet in C minor, D. 703 (“Quartettsatz”) is hard to resist: lovely, lyrical and (best of all) over in a flash.

In other words, it’s not much more than a musical “appetizer,” as the Ariel Quartet’s Jan Grüning put it at the start of the group’s performance at the Kreeger Museum on Saturday night. And having dispatched the Schubert with offhanded ease, this fine young ensemble quickly turned serious, taking on two of the most emotionally and spiritually probing works in the entire repertoire.

First up was Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite,” from 1926. It’s a masterpiece in every way, a work of such imagination, psychological power and raw, aching beauty — despite its being written in Schoenberg’s loved-by-almost-nobody 12-tone system — that other chamber works from the period scurry away in shame. The Ariel Quartet’s players turned in a gripping and often very subtle reading, setting ear-melting tenderness against seething passion with a deft and precise touch.

After an alarmingly long intermission — whole empires had time to rise and fall during it — the quartet returned for Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. The program notes that Beethoven wrote the work while suffering from “bowel inflammation,” but that doesn’t seem to explain either the spiritual agonies or the transcendent glories of this spectacular work. Like the Berg piece, it is vast in scope and profound in human understanding, and despite a rather blah, nap-inducing start, the quartet seemed to come alive in the hymnlike third movement, turning in a riveting and committed reading, led by violinist Alexandra Kazovsky.