John Cage’s later string quartets — the String Quartet in Four Parts (1949-50), Thirty Pieces for String Quartet (1983) and Four (1989) — are not perhaps immediately accessible. They are exercises in sonic quality, manipulating time and space to make room for a soundscape that is at once strange and mesmerizing. Our perceptions, too, are manipulated; patterns repeat and slowly evolve, so that even the slightest bowstroke becomes familiar, and dissonances are played so tenderly we forget they’re supposed to sound harsh. Cage was a fearless experimenter, and his techniques skirt the boundaries of our tolerance. In Nearly Stationary, the third movement of the String Quartet in Four Parts, it’s the nearly that’s vital. The music isn’t static, but suspended — a hiatus from real time.

Which is why the Quatuor Bozzini’s immersive all-Cage program worked so well on Saturday evening. Hearing the three pieces in succession allowed us to transition into an altered mindset, where it’s impossible to be hurried or preoccupied. McGill’s Tanna Schulich Hall — an ideal room for this kind of concert — was near full, and the audience was breathtakingly silent. This was Cage lovingly played and received.