In composing and revising his Fourth String Quartet of 1928, Béla Bartók manifested a concern for musical symmetry that had been developing in his piano works for nearly two decades. It is for this reason that the Fourth String Quartet requires performers to pay a remarkable amount of attention to thematic detail while firmly grasping the structure of the piece as a whole. The Jasper Quartet, made up of violinists J. Freivogel and Evan Few, violist Sam Quintal and cellist Rachel Henderson, accepted this challenge, grabbing hold of the work’s subtleties with verve and precision Wednesday night in Kulas Recital Hall.

Abstracted folk tunes are patched together to build the bulk of the first movement. Because of their severe harmonic distortion, these folk quotations would be entirely inaudible if it were not for Bartók’s use of Bulgaria’s irregular rhythmic idioms. The quartet refused to let such a crucial aspect of Bartók’s composition go unnoticed, romping through the rough terrain with such facility and enthusiasm it might well have been a stroll around a Rose festival. The second movement is filled with whizzing 16th note runs offset between parts. Playing such a movement is like trying to jump on a moving train, but one would not suspect such difficulty based on Jasper’s performance; the group exuded complete awareness and an air of nonchalance while performing some of the most difficult passages chamber music has to offer.

Perhaps serendipitously, the upper strings aligned the individual undulations of their vibrato as they prepared for the cello solo in the third movement. Once the cello entered, it was impossible to avoid being captivated by Henderson’s drama and high style. She shared a visible connection with the music and knew exactly how she wanted the phrases to be portrayed. This movement highlighted one of the quartet’s many strengths: each member of Jasper plays with equal confidence, virtuosity and sympathy.

The fourth movement, which is entirely pizzicato, provides an honest challenge for performers. Although reminiscent of the second movement’s thematic material, it was added later as part of Bartók’s attempt at complete symmetry. Because of this, the movement has a tendency to sound out of place if the appropriate nuances are not emphasized. The musical direction is also ambiguous due to the zany melodic motion and capricious technical demands. (The score instructs players to recklessly switch from strumming to normal pizzicato to Bartók’s signature “snap” pizzicato at a moment’s notice.) Jasper moved through the music as if it were simply a brief recess from the intensity of the outer movements, smirking at one another and liberally manipulating both tone and tempo. Whether their interpretation expressed the movement’s alienation from or its innate connection to the rest of the piece is unclear and unimportant, because it was exciting to watch and obviously enjoyable for the quartet to perform.

The performance ended with the quartet throwing themselves headfirst into the contours of the fifth movement, which depicts a dynamic conversation between instruments. The resolution appears in the coda where the themes of the first movement are brought back into the melodic foreground. Jasper emphasized this final statement of symmetry by visually releasing tension and tweaking the clarity of their timbre as if to say, “Here is my point.”

What is the point? The Jasper Quartet was born to succeed. Having played together for only two years, they have somehow already mastered communication; they play off of each other’s energy as if they’ve been together a lifetime. Bartók surely would have been thrilled to have his “symmetrical” quartet played by such a balanced and vibrant ensemble.