MUSIC REVIEW : QUARTET’S BEETHOVEN CYCLE BEGINS

No higher recommendation for the current, six-program Beethoven cycle being given by the touring Emerson Quartet could be given than the authoritative, serious manner in which the ensemble began that cycle, Friday night in Wadsworth Theater, Westwood.

True to their conviction that the 16 quartets ought to be performed in the order in which its separate parts were written, the members of the Emerson Quartet--violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel--began this opening agenda not with Beethoven’s first-numbered Quartet in F, Opus 18, No. 1, but with his first- composed Quartet in D, Opus 18, No. 3.

A small point, but important. So was the ensemble’s playing of this most pensive and forward-looking of the first three works in the cycle. Setzer, taking the first-violin part--he and Drucker share equally in the duties of leader of the quartet--led the way in a probing, thoroughly thought-out, virtually immaculate reading.

The high polish on this performance, and in general on the ensemble’s playing of the F-major and G-major (No. 2) quartets of Opus 18, bode well for this “Odyssey”--as the Emersons call their current, peripatetic Beethoven cycle around Southern California--for the first duty of any group playing the cycle is to deliver the outward aspects of the works in as musically truthful an aural package as possible.

Handsome sounds and clean lines certainly mark the best work of these instrumentalists. But, as exhibited most pertinently in the slow movements of these three works, their collective musical intelligence also meets the standard of thought one assumes in practitioners of this repertory.

A highly developed sense of playfulness and of humors might more often be brought into focus; all three finales on Friday actually suffered from more sobriety than is true to their style. Given the youth of the players, however, one can almost relax in the feeling that there is time.