MUSIC REVIEWS : Stamic Quartet Opens Music Guild Series

Who says Czechoslovak musicians play Czechoslovakian music better?

In opening the 47th season of the Music Guild concerts--one of our more valuable chamber music series--the Stamic Quartet of Prague gave little hint of being privy to any invigorating national tradition.

Instead, the quartet--violinists Bohuslav Matsousek and Josef Kekula, violist Jan Peruska, cellist Vladimir Leixner--offered ultra-polished, eminently well-mannered, cushy-toned readings of Dvorak, Martinu and Haydn.

The Stamic (the Czech spelling for Stamitz, the Bohemian family of musicians) opened Wednesday’s concert at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre with Haydn’s String Quartet Opus 71, No. 1, in a performance lively in rhythm, near-perfect in ensemble and intonation but small in expressive and dynamic range. Haydn’s sharp accents were prettified out of existence, lightly pointed in attack and quickly vibratoed in follow-through.

Similarly, Dvorak’s Opus 105 String Quartet emerged all luxurious textures and sweet melodies, a recipe that brought it uncomfortably close to the salon.

In between, came Martinu’s Quartet No. 7, “Concerto da Camera,” a work seldom ventured on these shores, though it was written here. In this 20-minute plus, three-movement work, the neo-Baroque allegros, full of purposefully straying harmonies, and themes and textures reminiscent of Janacek, are balanced by a pensive, canonic Andante. One can imagine another group--the Emersons or the Arditti--making much of it. The Stamic made it merely tidy.