The Princeton University Summer Concerts series continued its popular season last week with a performance by the Chiara String Quartet, which presented a concise and well-balanced program to a very appreciative audience. These free summer chamber concerts have become the thing to do on hot summer nights in Princeton, and the audience at Richardson Auditorium last Monday night was not disappointed by the Chiara Quartet’s level of play or choice of repertoire. The quartet, comprised of violinists Rebecca Fischer and Julie Hye-Yung Yoon, violist Jonah Sirota, and cellist Gregory Beaver, presented two chamber standards and a work by a composer with whom they have had a long association.

Franz Josef Haydn’s string quartets were the model for the genre during the 18th and a good part of the 19th centuries. His Opus 76 was a courtly set of quartets, and the fifth of this set was particularly joyful. Led by first violinist Ms. Fischer, the first movement was a refreshing start to the Chiara’s concert. Ms. Fischer drew out the phrase cadences especially well, with Mr. Beaver playing with a rich and mellow sound when the cello had long solo passages.

Throughout the four-movement work, the Chiara String Quartet demonstrated excellent communication with one another, building simultaneous dynamic swells and crescendi. Mr. Beaver was well in control in the third movement Menuetto, providing a solid foundation to the ensemble sound. The final Presto was high-spirited, with a quick melody traded between violin and cello, and precision among the players as the work came to a close.

Like the Chiara Quartet, Massachusetts-born composer Jefferson Friedman is young, and his String Quartet No. 2 had an energetic exuberance and contemporary intricacy about it. The Chiara Quartet has a long-standing partnership with Mr. Friedman (he has written three quartets for them) and clearly had his second String Quartet well in hand. From the outset the four instruments maintained simultaneous intensity through the very rhythmic and canonic movement. Mr. Friedman’s work had a great deal of motion, interspersed with haunting and expressive solos. The three movements had no descriptive subtitles, but were different in character, with the Chiara ensemble bringing out well the stylistic variety. In the hymn-like second movement, Mr. Friedman created a soothing texture with two violins and viola against a subtle cello accompaniment, and the ensemble showed its expertise in working together with collective silences and reaching points of rest together. The third movement contained an unusual texture, with the viola being the only instrument bowed against sharp pizzicatti from the other players. The Chiara Quartet maintained focus and intensity well as this difficult yet appealing work drew to a close.

The quartet showed its full strength in Brahms’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, the last of the composer’s three quartets. Brahms composed many of his violin works for a specific performer, as evidenced by the lyrical song played by first violinist Ms. Fischer in the second movement. The Chiara ensemble played this piece from memory, which enabled the players to fully communicate with one another unencumbered by music stands. The players seemed to lean in more, playing with ease and sensitivity, and the audience was definitely intrigued by how much more one can see in a performer when they are playing from memory.

The Chiara players could feel instinctively when to move from resting point into motion, especially in a second movement which could easily have come from Brahms’s sacred repertoire. The players brought out well the gypsy-like syncopation in the third movement Agitato, with the muted first violin matching the dark color of the viola. The charming Viennese fourth movement which closed the work reminded the audience of the chamber roots of the string quartet genre and sent the audience off into the summer night feeling as though they had been to a delightful and intimate soirée.