MUSIC REVIEWS : Orion Quartet Performs in Long Beach

For decades, several generations of faculty and students at Cal State Long Beach waited for the construction of major auditoriums and arenas on their campus.

Suddenly, in the mid-1990s, and within a year, three such venues have arisen--all three at the north end of the premises, all facing Atherton Street.

Nonetheless, several other theaters on the campus retain their usefulness. The Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall, for instance, which hosts, among many other events, the Music Guild series.

As second attraction on the 1994-95 Guild season, the New York-based Orion String Quartet played music by Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms there on Monday.

The Orion--violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips (brothers), violist Steven Tenenbom and cellist Timothy Eddy--is a tight ensemble of hotshot youngish musicians, extremely virtuosic and accomplished players who seem to have been born to be together.

Their concert in the 278-seat hall offered excitement and intimacy in equal parts: The acoustically often-maligned room has probably seldom held such aggressive yet effective performances.

Haydn’s F-major Quartet, Opus 50, No. 5, established the group’s profile: high-energy, nervous but centered playing, probing musicality, polished surfaces.

Beethoven’s third “Rasumovsky” Quartet, Opus 59, confirmed the earlier impression; in time, one senses, a certain mellowness will be added to the ensemble’s virtues--but not yet. At this point, all musical issues are not fully clarified for or projected to the listener. Even so, the probity and exuberance of the playing demands admiration.

Capping the evening was a similarly aggressive and impassioned, if sometimes overdrawn, performance of Brahms’ Quintet in G, Opus 111, in which violist Heiichiro Ohyama was the guest artist. One has to be happy to be in a room where so much music is being created.

* The Orion String Quartet performs on the Music Guild series at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, 4401 E. Eighth St. (213) 939-1128, today at 8 p.m. Tickets: $18-$22.