MUSIC REVIEW : ORFORD OPENS GUILD SEASON

The Orford Quartet, which opened the 1986-87 Music Guild season Wednesday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, is one of the best in the business. It comprises four vigilant enemies of the routine--violinists Andrew Dawes and Kenneth Perkins, violist Robert Levine (a new recruit) and cellist Denis Brott--who on this occasion thought themselves into a few interpretive corners.

In Haydn’s wonderfully deep “Horseman” Quartet, the group purveyed a suave exploration of the softer dynamics, at incomprehensibly slow tempos. Haydn’s pungent humor and rhythmicality went by the boards.

Restraint also marked the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, but to a decidedly positive end, with pianist John Perry wisely and expertly blending his efforts with those of the strings rather than trying to make a splashy solo impression with what is basically an extended obbligato part. The composer’s sad, soft cantilenas and lumpy-acrid humor are so much more affecting when treated as they were by the Orford: with velvet tone rather than the customary gutiness, and at moderate--rather than precipitately fast or agonizingly slow--tempos.

Finally, Smetana’s splendid Quartet in E minor, “From My Life,” was flawlessly executed from a technical standpoint, but the hyperpolished interpretation struck these ears as being dead wrong: emotionally and dynamically withdrawn, when the limits of sentiment and tone should be projected. A sleek gentrification of the composer’s dancingly ebullient, often raw, peasant vigor.