The next one will seem to be upon us quicker than you can say “the eighth quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.”

So the organization presented a benefit concert Tuesday night to emphasize there’s just one recession-burdened year to put the contest on solid financial ground. Eight string players, under the guidance of IVCI jury president Jaime Laredo, contributed their services gratis, and $75 post-concert reception packages were sold.

Fortunately, the concert’s quality suited the occasion. The performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat major by violinists Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Benny Kim and Cathy Meng Robinson, violists Yu Jin and Steven Tenenbom, and cellists Keith Robinson and Sharon Robinson sealed the deal.

The 16-year-old composer had genius, taste and facility when he wrote this amazing piece. In adulthood, the genius withered, the taste remained and the facility no longer mattered so much. Tuesday’s performance didn’t get stuck on Mendelssohn’s precociousness but treated the Octet deservedly as a full-fledged masterpiece.

The slow movement, not the most prepossessing in its substance, had texture and atmosphere brought to the fore. The gossamer scherzo movement never planted a heavy foot in an eight-way dance of sprites.

The outer movements were superb, with the Presto finale debonair and profound at the same time. Mendelssohn’s taste extended to movement headings: “Allegro moderato, ma con fuoco” means moderately fast, but with fire. Applying moderation, its fiery splendors can be fully displayed, and that’s just what Laredo and his mates did.

Laredo and Sharon Robinson opened the concert with a well-coordinated but rather dry and perfunctory reading of the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia for Violin and Cello. Kavafian and Tenenbom entered the implied “couples competition” with the advantage of a better work, Mozart’s Duo for Violin and Viola in B-flat major, K. 424. But they also brought more to it, including greater warmth, vivacity and tonal richness.

Just before intermission, the Miami String Quartet (consisting of the four not involved in the duos) gave a captivating account of Alberto Ginastera’s lively String Quartet No. 1. The 20th-century Argentine didn’t shed folk elements in his modernist language till late in his career. They lend essential flavoring to this work, and the quartet found both the exuberance and the inner tension of the score.