Freezing weather couldn’t keep diehards from an evening of high-end modernism with the complete string quartets of Elliott Carter. A single Carter quartet gives the listener’s mind a testing workout. But all five of them?

Without a group as inspired and committed as the Pacifica Quartet, the prospect might seem frightening. Luckily, these superb American musicians don’t simply offer the technical rigour needed for Carter’s whirling wonders. They also supply incredible beauties of tone and phrasing. In their hands, the weaving independent lines sing with romantic ardour. Throughout, the Pacificas never made one ugly sound, even when playing intensive pizzicato.

We were also helped by our eyes. Carter has called his quartets “auditory scenarios”: so they are. The Second spreads out the four players, cast as different characters, battling and commingling. The Third splits the group into two duos, each with their own material, rubbing alongside. All this we saw as well as heard.

At the same time, the Pacifica members lit up the night with their personal gusto and quirks. Brandon Vamos had his vigorous bowing arm. The second violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson specialized in furious pizzicato. Masumi Per Rostad rode his viola with sumptuous, dark intensity. As for the first violinist Simin Ganatra, each time the score sent her soaring close to the instrument’s bridge you knew from her face and tone that she’d just set foot in Paradise. The combined result? Spellbinding. The epic First Quartet of 1951, gathering momentum with each player running at different speeds, was thrilling enough. But the crowning glory was surely the Third--such a tangle of simultaneity that early performers in the 1970s needed headphones and a click-track to stay exact. Not the Pacificas: they flew free on nerves and experience alone. An astonishing performance.

Were we flagging by the Fourth Quartet? Well, we’re only human. But then came the Fifth of 1995, clearer and simpler. The theatrical fun and games wound down to a pair of notes, unusually consonant, from Ganatra’s violin. Carter’s whirlwind had come to rest at last.