Linking Zen Buddhism and motorcycle maintenance gave Robert M. Pirsig a cheeky title for his 1974 bestselling philosophical novel, but motorcycles and string quartets cohabit the imagination with even less logic.

So when the St. Lawrence String Quartet first violinist Geoff Nuttall proposed imagining the first movement of Osvaldo Golijov’s new work for string quartet “Kohelet” as a windblown motorcycle ride, it evoked more than a chuckle from Friday’s (Feb. 10) audience at Conrad Prebys Concert Hall.

Having just been taken on a wild escapade through Joseph Haydn’s “F Minor String Quartet,” Op. 20, No. 5, by Nuttall and his St. Lawrence colleagues, his suggestion seemed amusingly congruent. Written in 2011 for the St. Lawrence String Quartet, “Kohelet” is a compact, two-movement minimalist etude suffused with a romantic yearning atypical of the minimalist franchise.

Hearing a new Golijov piece is always an adventure, because we are always wondering which side of his eclectic style will predominate. Will it be his parents’ Romanian klezmer influence, so pronounced in “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind,” or the rhythmic choral traditions of his adopted Argentina, the ones that pervade La Pasión según San Marcos, or the Arabic modes and sonorities that support the singer in “Ayre”? “Kohelet” displays none of these exotic influences.

Without the first violin’s impassioned, sustained melodic arcs throughout the opening movement—Golijov’s indelible thumbprint—the unwavering undulations of the three lower voices verge on academic minimalism.

The second movement proceeds like a solemn hymn over which the two violins trade soaring antiphonal motifs. In this piece, the harmonic vocabulary falls somewhere between the earnest modality of Alan Hovhaness and the more complex modal clusters of Olivier Messiaen. Nuttall explained that although “Kohelet” had been performed several times since its October premiere at Stanford University, where the ensemble has been in residence since 1998, the version performed at UC San Diego has an entirely new second movement, which the composer supplied only recently.

If “Kohelet” is indeed a work in progress, I would respectfully suggest it could use a third movement to give its musical journey a greater sense of arrival. Who knows—Golijov may be working on such a movement at this moment. As string quartets go, the St. Lawrence players are unusually rambunctious, especially the violinists Nuttall and Scott St. John.

In the Haydn F Minor Quartet, this vivacity encompassed a playful quality that moderated the severity of the minor mode thematic material, but not to the detriment of the composer’s intent, I would say. After all, Haydn gave us those musically witty symphonic scores we call “Surprise” and “Farewell.”

The invigorating, bouyant quality the players brought to this Haydn quartet only made it more inviting to the attentive listener. Cellist Christopher Costanza’s consistently propulsive line deserves particular credit for focusing the quartet’s pace and undergirding its tight internal unity. Violist Lesley Robertson had rare solo exposure in the quartet, but her alert contribution was no less essential to St. Lawrence’s polished account.

Antonin Dvorak’s rhapsodic “String Quartet in A-flat Major,” Op. 105, proved to be nothing less than catnip to St. Lawrence. The verve and finesse this ensemble brought to the Dvorak sends traditional chamber music lovers home on a pink cloud. But not even an entirely traditional program would keep me away from a St. Lawrence String Quartet performance.

They are quite simply the most consistently suave and persuasive chamber musicians on the circuit today.

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