Bartok Group Lets Emotions Show

Chamber music audiences have become so accustomed to perfection that one worries about their response to the rare major ensemble for whom optimum technical finish is secondary to emotional projection.

We’re talking about the venerable Bartok Quartet of Budapest, one of the few groups still before the public that can get away with those spots of mechanical bother so seldom encountered among their younger competitors.

That the Bartok Quartet’s communicative powers remain intact was affirmed Sunday at the William Andrews Clark Memorial. The Bartoks--violinists Peter Komlos and Geza Hargitai, violist Geza Nemeth, cellist Laszlo Mezo--offered a nourishing program comprising Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet and the Ravel Quartet, neatly contrasted stylistically by these artists, and namesake Bela Bartok’s audience- and performer-challenging Fifth Quartet.

The assembled listeners loved the bold Haydn and lush Ravel, went wild over the Bartok.

What remains unique about the Bartok’s Bartok, occasional technical lapses notwithstanding, is the degree of lyricism and wit these players extract from such knotty scores, without undermining their pulsing, thrusting folk-dancing motion. It’s also a matter of sound: No other ensemble seems able to, or cares to, deliver Bartok with such plush sonorities as do these inspired Hungarians.