O.C. MUSIC REVIEW : Kronos Quartet: Reliably Diverse

Despite its reputation, the Kronos Quartet doesn’t really seem to be out to defy European musical tradition--that elephant in the yard of classical music. Rather, it tends to work around and underneath Eurocentrism, in an ongoing search for a repertoire of coherent diversity.

So it went, in the group’s signature fashion, at the quartet’s concert Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. The program ventured from the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, home of composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, to Berkeley, home of composer John Adams. All in a night’s work for the Kronos.

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In a lone spotlight, on a darkened stage, cellist Joan Jeanrenaud spun out the forlorn phrases that began and ended Ali-Zadeh’s epic, impassioned “Mugam Sayagi.”

In between, the other players--violinists David Harrington and John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt--essayed with varying intensity and degrees of connectedness.

The Great American Microtonalist Harry Partch’s “Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales” wove a strange, raw beauty, as Harrington traced quixotic melody lines--out of tune by Western, 12-note scale standards--against a percussive, pizzicato backdrop.

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Back in the land of “precise” pitch, often played with unnerving regularity and, well, repetitious redundancy, the quartet brought out the Glass. For some reason, Phillip Glass’ Quartet No. 5 has been a Kronos concert staple of late, but it’s not one of the composer’s better works. Elements of maudlin late-19th-Century parlor passages mix with late-1950s rock ‘n’ roll rhythm-section riffs and bluegrass train-song quips, with no particular destination in mind.

Ken Benshoof’s “Song of Twenty Shadows,” written in memory of violist Dutt’s late life-partner, is a poignant lament geared around Dutt’s featured part, now sad, now angry, now serenely reflective.

The highlight of the evening, Adams’ 1994 work “John’s Book of Alleged Dances,” for string quartet and prerecorded tracks of mostly “prepared”--a la John Cage--piano, survived technical snafus and sync problems to unveil a wonderfully paradoxical spirit. Sturm und Drang meets Looney Toonishness, swerving harmonic colors meet post-minimalist forward momentum to create a sort of madcap iridescence.

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Even the encores trotted the globe: Hamza El Din’s “The Waterwheel” and the campy relief of Michael Daugherty’s “Elvis Everywhere,” a harmless whiff of kitsch on the way out.

* The Kronos Quartet performs tonight at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, with special guest Foday Musa Suso, 8 p.m. (310) 825-2101.