MUSIC REVIEW : Guarneri Quartet Varied in Rewards

There isn’t a curl in sight--rather, two bald heads and two silver manes--but the latter-years Guarneri String Quartet maintains its resemblance to Longfellow’s little girl: When they are good they are very, very good--continuing to set a gold standard for their craft--and when they are bad, they are close to horrid.

Both elements were represented in the veteran ensemble’s appearance at Ambassador Auditorium on Saturday.

The worst came first, with the “Hunt” Quartet of Mozart, in which second violinist John Dalley changed places with first violinist Arnold Steinhardt, to Mozart’s detriment.

Dalley, unexceptionable in his customary position, here supplied wiry tone, no remarkable leadership ability and small intonational slips that might have passed without comment in music less brutally exposing than Mozart’s.

Steinhardt, conversely, played a flawless second, with violist Michael Tree and cellist David Soyer doing their jobs with workaday professionalism.

After a ramshackle opening movement, Beethoven’s Opus 95 Quartet, with Steinhardt where he belonged, had the players finding their focus, starting with a powerfully delineated second-movement fugue, its part-writing laid out at once with surgical precision and musical passion.

With Grieg’s G-minor Quartet, long a Guarneri specialty, all heaven broke loose, reflected in playing of stunning intensity and voluptuousness of tone, if not the ensemble precision of earlier years.

The emphasis on Grieg’s agitato marking proved beneficial, keeping the music in motion and more often than not at fever pitch, the climate in which the composer might have created this sprawling, wildly inspired score for just such a group as today’s Guarneri Quartet.