The acclaimed Vermeer Quartet opened the 58th season of Chamber Music Columbus last night at the Southern Theatre in a concert of Austro-Germanic chamber music. The program featured the String Quartet Op. 76, No. 1 by Franz Joseph Haydn, the String Quartet No. 4, Op. 22 by Paul Hindemith and Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet in F minor, Op. 34.

Vermeer musicians Shmuel Askenasi, Mathias Tacke, Richard Young and Marc Johnson, along with guest pianist Caroline Hong, gave performances that modeled elegant restraint at every turn.

The Vermeer delivered Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 1 string quartet with taste, unencumbered by affectation or romantic excess. The quartet performed the choralelike opening melody of the second movement Adagio sostenuto with a beautifully warm, balanced sound.

In the third movement, Menuetto, the ensemble brought out both Haydn’s well-known wit and, in the movement’s Landlerlike trio section, his Austrian gentility. The quartet conveyed the angst of the final Allegro, ma no troppo without sacrificing either depth of sound or the dignity of the musical idea.

The musicians maintained this musical integrity throughout Hindemith’s fourth-string quartet, swaddling the edginess of Hindemith’s dissonant musical language in a gorgeous blanket of sound. The players’ cool, objective approach to the obsessive, repeated motives was effective.

Pianist Hong struck a fine balance between soloist and ensemble player throughout the Brahms quintet, allowing her sound to shine forth without overpowering the strings. She tiptoed through the transition into the first movement’s development section. Even in her extended solo passage at the beginning of the Andante, un poco adagio, Hong maintained a gentle sound above the string accompaniment.

The playing was tailor-made to this elegant repertory. Even the vociferous cell phone that rang out at the beginning of the concert’s second half couldn’t pull these expert musicians off their game.