MUSIC REVIEW : Music Guild Series Opens With Stamic : The Czech quartet, due in O.C. Sunday, offers cushy readings of Dvorak, Martinu and Haydn.

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, nearly 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.

The group seemed uninterested in exploring the troubled waters that lie just below the surface--indeed, sometimes on it--of this music. Even the second movement Furiant, a dance of a normally fiery character, became bubbly in these players’ hands.

In between came Martinu’s Quartet No. 7, “Concerto da Camera,” which will be included on the group’s program Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. This 20-minute-plus three-movement work is seldom ventured on these shores, although it was written here. Its neo-Baroque allegros, full of purposely straying harmonies, and its 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.

The Stamic Quartet will play Martinu’s Quartet No. 7 (“Concerto da Camera”); Beethoven’s Quartet No. 11 in F-minor, Op. 95 , and Smetana’s Quartet No. 1 in E-minor (“From My Life”) Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $20. Information: (714) 556-2787.