The Seattle Chamber Music Society's summer festival made its way across the lake Wednesday night, opening its series at the Overlake School in Redmond. In what will be its final weeks at this location (the festival will take place entirely at Benaroya Hall in Seattle next year), the nearly full theater of Eastsiders showed exuberant appreciation.

The program was thematically connected by the close friendship between two of the three featured composers (Schumann and Brahms). But first, there was Mozart.

Pianist Adam Neiman is to be commended on his subtle and elegant performance in Mozart's Quartet for Piano and Strings, K. 493. The string corps of violinist Ida Levin, violist Che-Yen Chen, and cellist Amit Peled were a tight unit in this pleasing work that was supposedly written for amateur musicians. The piano part betrays the composer's intention to create a much more challenging work, with understated courtly elegance but undeniable complexity. There is a call and response dynamic between the piano and the string ensemble through much of this, and a charming bit of humor between the piano and violin in the final movement.

Cellist Peled was just getting warmed up. He took the stage again with pianist William Wolfram (in what might be called The Attack of the Tall Musicians) to perform the Stucke im Volkston for Cello and Piano by Robert Schumann. In his remarks before the performance, Peled joked that Schumann was not himself a cellist, and that the work was not written for the cello so much as against it.

One would never know this from listening. Peled took all the problems with the composition (which is a setting of five German folk songs) and whelmed them with his mastery. This rarely heard work is well worth hearing live by a conquering performer. Peled launched into the robust opening with great verve, and slipped into the sweet moments that the composer wrote to signify his meeting with his wife, Clara. Schumann is a poster child for the Romantic Movement, and so there were plenty of emotional extremes in the music to play with. Peled went to every one with amazing dexterity, and earned resounding gratitude from the audience.

The headliner for the evening was the Quintet for Piano and Strings, Op. 34, by Brahms. Scott Yoo, who has been an absolute dynamo throughout this festival, provided great leadership again from the first violin chair, joined by second violinist Emily Dagget Smith, violist Marcus Thompson, cellist Robert deMaine and pianist Anton Nel.

Huge and lush, with a complex weave of darkness and light, this quintet (along with several chamber works by Brahms) has been accused of being a symphony in disguise.

The most satisfying movement is the third, a most un-scherzolike Scherzo, which moves between a quiet, stealthy theme, like a distant procession, to a triumphal march that bursts into the foreground at maximum volume. Though generally considered a calmer character than Schumann, Brahms was no stranger to extremes himself.

The result was deep satisfaction for performers and audience alike.

Coming up

This year's chamber-music festival wraps up Aug. 12. In the final week:

• Friday: Preconcert recital is Brahms' Sonata for Cello and Piano in F Major, Op. 99, featuring Robert deMaine and Adam Neiman. Also on the bill: Another Brahms piece plus works by Grieg, Dvorák and Schumann.

• Monday: Beethoven's Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello in G Major, Op. 9, with Ida Levin, Richard O'Neill and Amit Peled; also, works by Grieg and Elgar.

• Wednesday: University of Washington piano professor Craig Sheppard tackles his specialty — Brahms — in Four Ballades for Piano, Op. 10, in the 7 p.m. free recital.

• Friday: Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major, Op. 30, No. 1, with Levin and Orion Weiss.