Bartok's music meets its muse

Any music appreciation class will tell you that Bela Bartok was influenced by folk music of the Hungarian countryside, but what exactly does that mean? A fascinating program on Sunday afternoon in Jordan Hall explored this question by placing two Hungarian ensembles side by side: the Takacs Quartet, which was founded in Budapest in 1975 and plays the composer's music with commanding authority, and Muzsikas, a Hungarian folk ensemble founded around the same time and devoted to older rural styles that once flourished in the very villages that Bartok visited with his Edison cylinder phonograph in hand.

The concert, presented by the Celebrity Series, had the two groups alternating in the spotlight, with the members of Muzsikas dispatching fiddle-driven dance tunes (from Transylvania, Moravia, and elsewhere) as well as some more lyrical traditional melodies rendered on the wispy long flute or sung with a reedy yet alluring tone by vocalist Marta Sebestyen. For its part, the Takacs Quartet lit into Bartok's String Quartet No. 4, playing with both superb ensemble musicianship and, at times, even more abandon than their folk band counterparts.

In the second half, violinists from the two ensembles joined together for some of Bartok's Duos and the final set was a medley of the composer's famous Romanian Folk Dances interwoven with performances of their source tunes. Overall, the onstage chemistry between the two groups was fairly limited, and Sebestyen and the members of Muzsikas at times seemed less than fully at ease in this classical setting. The exception was Daniel Hamar, Muzsikas's avuncular, barrel-chested bass player who served as the afternoon's good-humored emcee. For the very last selection, both groups came together for a high-spirited dash through a Romanian "Maruntel" or "Quick Dance."

To be sure, this program had a terrific idea behind it and the musical performances by both groups were often richly satisfying, but the points of genuine illumination and contact were fewer than one might have hoped for. What Bartok heard and what he actually wrote were sometimes easily connected, as with the violin duos, but more often the connections are less linear, and this program seemed to have little interest in probing them more deeply. One wished in a way that its journey had begun precisely where it ended.

Bartok's relationship to folk music was complex, filtered through levels of Romantic idealization and modernist striving. He saw folk music as a way of renewing the energies of a classical tradition exhausted by 19th-century grandeur; the music of rural peoples, living close to nature and to a life of authentic expression, could show the way forward. For Bartok, the peasants he met were primitive, perhaps, but also unwitting musical pioneers - avant-gardists with mud on their boots.

Sunday's program included a few tantalizing excerpts from the composer's own field recordings, about a century old, distorted and warbly but still giving a glimpse into these historic encounters and whetting the appetite for more. The program would indeed have been stronger with more biographic materials, excerpts from the composers' writings and correspondence, and perhaps even imagery from some of the places he visited. These two ensembles have found the kernel of a musically rich, historically meaningful program; they should continue to develop it.

Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.