MUSIC REVIEWS : STANFORD QUARTET

The Stanford String Quartet consists of four faculty players from the music department of the univeristy in Palo Alto. But the ensemble, which made its Southern California debut in Schoenberg Hall at UCLA Sunday afternoon, is not your garden-variety faculty quartet.

For one thing, the first violinist is Andor Toth, a veteran of such respected groups as the New Hungarian Quartet and the Alma Trio. For another, Toth’s cohorts----violinist Don Ehrlich and cellist Stephen Harrison----play with the same high level of musicianship and intensity. Finally, as the program demonstrated on Sunday, the Quartet appears greater than the sum of its parts.

Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” revealed a full-bodied ensemble tone that also permitted a transpanency of texture. In the allegro, the players skillfully sustained long lines of tension; in the andante, they proved they can play softly.

In Peter Mennin’s over-busy Quartet No. 2, they proved they can play with volume and speed----asnd uninamity. The performance was unfailingy energetic and virtually flawless

The concert began with a brisk, if occasionally rough, reading of Beethoven’s Quartet, Opus 18, No. 6, and ended with the slow movement of Debussy’s Quartet, in encore.