More because of the program than the performance, the Paganini Quartet produced a remarkable concert last Friday night. Two important modern works, by Alberto Ginestera and Anton Webern, carried away the best efforts of the Quartet, but stand-by quartets by Haydn and Beethoven received flat performances.

It was good of the Paganini Quartet to retrieve Ginestera, currently Argentina's leading composer, from the limbo to which serious Latin American composers are relegated. Ginestera's Quartet No. 1 (1950) attempts, according to Henri Temianka, first violinist, to evoke ancient Aztec and Incan civilizations. It combines the performance effects of Ravel and Debussy, the rhythmic drive and insistence of Bartok, and a peculiar harmonic clarity which could be interpreted as simple-mindedness. Both the first and second movements, in spite of constant, rapid, and vigorous rhythms, remain static on D. Open fifths, played tutti, reinforce the strength of the rhythms. The quartet suggests Bartok's brutality, but lacks Bartok's subtlety, variety, and startling originality.

Webern's Five Pieces of String Quartet experiment with the tensions of silence. They are an exquisite exploration of the shades of restraint, a catalogue of delicate sonorities. In contrast to the Ginestera, every note comes necessarily, logically; Webern probed deeply, but quietly. The five short pieces alternate in mood from taut chattering to strained deliberation. Yet every note requires sensitivity, and in response the Quartet turned in its best job of the evening.

The other two works on the program were Hayden's D major quartet, Opus 20, No. 4, and Beethoven's F minor quartet, Opus 95. The performance of the Beethoven was occasionally uncoordinated, rarely clear, and never balanced. Haydn, as Temianka remarked, wrote for the diletanti of the local aristocracy, and in fact, the performance sounded quite dilettantish: the meters of the first and third movements were ambiguous and the 'cello muddy. But in the slow movement, Haydn dispensed with any melodrama or surprises. While the movement's great serene flow, like the cadence of a sonnet, revealed no secrets, it was delicious.