MUSIC REVIEW : Czechoslovakian Quartet Opens Founders Hall Series : Despite a weak program, the group manages to fill the Performing Arts Center with an atmosphere of cultural intimacy.

The Panocha String Quartet opened the 1990-91 “Music in Founders Hall” series at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with a concert Sunday centered around works by their Czech compatriots Bohuslav Martinu and Leos Janacek. As representatives of native culture, the quartet itself was much more consistent than its program.

Violinists Jiri Panocha and Pavel Zejfart, violist Miroslav Sehnoutka and cellist Jaroslav Kulhan brought a warm, dark tone and an intimate atmosphere to the stark 299-seat Founders Hall. Opening with a refined reading of Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet, the four demonstrated secure communicative powers whether required to apply delicate precision or pushed into aggressive contrapuntal competition.

The Czech compositions underscored the quartet’s stylistic versatility, its ability to shift easily from classical to contemporary idioms. Martinu’s Quartet No. 5, written in 1938, is a modern adaptation of Eastern European flavors. It begins with a busy hubbub of a movement punctuated by interludes of intense lyricism. Eerie melodies surface throughout the piece, dominating the atmospheric adagio and emerging with ominous insistence in the third-movement allegro vivo. The musicians responded convincingly with a focused sound, balancing troubled, interweaving lines with homophonic climaxes and worried respites.

Dating from 1928 and subtitled “Intimate Letters,” Janacek’s Second Quartet is a disjunct, undeveloped work that challenges performers to tie up myriad loose ends. It is full of about-faces in tempo and sentiment, and it abounds in ideas that--though heard frequently enough to be memorable--never blossom into the next thought with any sense of inevitability. Any listeners who don’t know the story behind the piece--a series of ardent love letters to a considerably younger woman--may find that it disintegrates into a hodgepodge of mixed emotions.

The Panocha Quartet put up a mighty struggle. The players exploited what strengths they could find--the passionate passages of the first movement, the inscrutable intensity of the third. Ultimately, however, the weaknesses of the score defeated even these most valiant of suitors.

Two encores brought relief from the very serious and searching program--a graceful minuet from Mozart’s E-flat Quartet, K. 171, and a lighthearted arrangement entitled “Pizzicato” from Gluck’s ballet “Don Juan.” Understated good nature marked both selections.