Once in a while concert-going becomes the revelatory experience that all concertgoers hope it will be.

Such was the case Tuesday night when the Buffalo Chamber Music Society brought the Muir String Quartet and pianist Menahem Pressler to Kleinhans’ Mary Seaton Room.

If it had been a rock concert, the end of the show would have featured hordes of cell phones being held up high in the air for their ghostly glow to cast light on ecstatic faces.

But it was a classical music program and the performers had to be content with an audience that just stood up and clapped like mad while a few voices gave forth an occasional “huzzah.”

No matter. The house was still rocked.

It all began with a brief little bonbon by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a composer whose small wonders frequently outshine other works on programs. The Adagio and Fugue in C minor (K. 546) actually expanded a prior Fugue for two pianos (K. 426) and did so with good results.

The Muir Quartet handled Mozart’s compositional progression from deceptively simple to complex with speed and grace.

The same sterling musicianship was on display in Erwin Schulhoff’s “Five Pieces” for string quartet.

Schulhoff’s early years straddled the cusp of the 20th century, a period when European classical music was undergoing some of its most challenging stylistic permutations.

Some composers found inspiration in microtones or atonal expressionism but the importation of jazz rhythms from America arguably made the biggest immediate impression among modernists.

Schulhoff’s score is roughly 13 minutes long and was written in 1923.

All the movements have descriptive instructions like “Alla Valse Viennese”, “Alla Tango” and “Alla Tarantella” that effectively describe the dance rhythms at the heart of these pieces.

The Muirs did right by the composer.

Vibrant and driving playing with quick, madcap moments flaring throughout their brief performance, the group made a case for this work to be heard more often.

But the top of the bill — the creme de la creme of the evening — was Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, op. 34.

With Pressler, the former pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio, added to the quartet, the results verged upon magical.

Fiery intensity in the first movement was matched by a no-less-forceful, albeit subtler, emotion in the second.

The third movement was anthemic and incandescent with speed, power and drama.

And the work’s end was cathartic.

Could the concert have been better? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Concert Review

The Muir Quartet

With pianist Menahem Pressler on Tuesday night in the Mary Seaton Room of Kleinhans Music Hall.