MUIR QUARTET, St. Mary's Church, Park City, Thursday.

For a decade, the Muir Quartet has been closely associated with composer Joan Tower, performing a number of her works— often with her at the piano — during their annual three-week residency in Park City.

This year, the Muir (Peter Zazofsky and Lucia Lin, violins; Steve Ansell, viola; and Michael Reynolds, cello) is back in the mountain resort as part of Utah Symphony & Opera's new Deer Valley Music Festival. And one of the highlights of the festival so far was the local premiere Thursday of Tower's most recent chamber work, the piano trio "For Daniel," performed by Lin, Reynolds and Tower.

Tower is without question this country's pre-eminent composer. What distinguishes her from many of her contemporary and younger colleagues is that her music has substance, depth and meaning — traits that are found all too seldom in today's music.

"For Daniel" received its world premiere in Tucson, Ariz., in March performed by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, for whom it was written. The trio is quite possibly the 65-year-old composer's finest chamber work to date. It is powerfully charged and emotionally draining, relentless in its intensity and uncompromising in its expression.

Tower wrote the work for her nephew Daniel, who passed away last December at the age of 48, after a long battle with a debilitating illness. The music is filled with the anguish, pain and suffering that Tower must have felt at seeing her nephew slowly dying. Yet there is also tenderness and a faint glimmer of hope, short-lived as it is, crushed by the overwhelming feeling of despair that courses through the piece. It delivers a compelling message, one that is not quickly forgotten, and despite the uneasiness one might feel at such disturbing emotions expressed so explicitly, one cannot help but be drawn into Tower's special world.

Finding suitable companion works in a program that contains this trio is a challenge. Wisely, the Muir selected two works that complemented, yet starkly contrasted with, "For Daniel." Tower's piece was followed, after intermission, by Brahms' Quartet No. 3 in B flat major, op. 67. The rich tapestry of sound that Brahms creates in this work was brought out fully by the Muir's lucid reading. They infused their playing with an earnestness that captured the music's warmth and amiability.

The Muir opened the concert with an engaging, if not entirely convincing, performance of one of Haydn's early and nearly forgotten quartets, the op. 20, no. 3, in G minor. The four musicians were somewhat bland in their execution and weak in their articulation. Fortunately, they came to life in the slow movement, conveying the pathos that Haydn expresses here with feeling and thoughtfulness.

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