BOSTON GLOBE Copyright Globe Newspaper Company 1993 DATE: THURSDAY, March 18, 1993 PAGE: 67 EDITION: THIRD SECTION: ARTS AND FILM LENGTH: MEDIUM ILLUST: PHOTO SOURCE: By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff MEMO: MUSIC REVIEW *ELVIS*COSTELLO*and THE BRODSKY QUARTET AT: Symphony Hall, last night. WEIGHT OF HIS LATEST REINVENTION DRAGS COSTELLO DOWN Once he stung; now he soothes. Once he said his songs were motivated by revenge and guilt; now he's spinning a song cycle loosely inspired by actual letters written to Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet on an album called ''The Juliet Letters.'' Fifteen years ago, he chased us out of the Orpheum Theater after a short, intense, wired concert with a blast of ear-piercing feedback. Last night before a sold-out crowd at Symphony Hall, he was every bit the gracious, witty entertainer. No drums, no guitars, no feedback -- no messy rock 'n' roll at all, in fact. A traditional Celtic weeper was presented as a St. Patrick's Day encore present, as were songs by Tom Waits, the Beach Boys and Jerome Kern. As for ''Alison,'' ''Shipbuilding,'' ''God's Comic'' or other fave raves from the past? Sorry, chum, maybe next time. Clearly, at least at present,*Elvis*Costello*-- veteran singer-songwriter and angry poet laureate of the New Wave generation -- was demonstrating that he'd moved 180 degrees away from his petulant punk days. His aim was serious. His demeanor was often somber, stately, refined. His comrades were England's esteemed Brodsky Quartet. So, give Costello the kind of credit you've given Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Neil Young and Lou Reed: He has no problem reinventing himself when the muse strikes, shucking his past while he still rides its reputation. But realize this, too: Not every reinvention is a marvel. (Check out Young's ''Trans,'' Reed's ''Metal Machine Music'' or any recent Dylan show, for example.) Costello stumbled during a brief country phase (''Almost Blue''), and this new classical/rock hybrid often sounds awkward, forced -- a work of grafting. It is not, mind you, discomforting or trivializing in the way ELP or ELO once were; Costello wasn't spewing classical gas. Neither did it seem he was striving to go high-brow while allowing the Brodskys -- violinists Michael Thomas and Ian Belton, violist Paul Cassidy, and cellist Jacqueline Thomas -- to go pop slumming. It seemed all their hearts were in the right place, but it rarely jelled. It lacked the dissonant glee the Kronos Quartet can bring to rock compositions and the reinterpretive power the Balanescu Quartet recently brought to five Kraftwerk songs on their ''Possessed'' album. Costello's show -- two hours of music plus a 20 minute intermission -- was almost entirely ''The Juliet Letters.'' Costello, who's shed the Jerry Garcia beard and heft of his last tour, and his pals played the entire work, all 20 selections, in order and added a new one, ''The King of The Unknown Sea'' as the first encore. Sporadically, Costello let loose with his rapier-like wit between songs, but the song cycle concept seemed leaden. Did any of these songs or letters or songs inspired by letters add up to anything? Did you care about the characters, the person whose ''life is as cold and dark as the sea,'' the spurned lover who envies his ex's next, the crazy woman who rants and raves? Not really. They were there, but not fleshed out so they mattered. While Costello and the Brodskys moved from loneliness to despair to madness to whimsy to folly to playfulness to heartbreak to a hint of redemption, it all added up to, well, not quite less than zero, but not a lot more. You were impressed more by the exercise, the lofty ambition than the musical or emotional content. For all the musical possibilities and range a string quartet offers, this set seemed oddly monochromatic, and Costello's vocalizing often seemed more like showboating than genuine emoting. He would be stiff one moment, and stoic the next, standing to the rear with his head bowed and his hands clasped as the Brodskys played. Then, he'd leap into over-gesticulating mode and make these would-be comic gestures. The audience often enough ate it up, reminding one of Dorothy Parker's review of an Oscar Wilde play where she opined the audience was laughing not because they were genuinely amused but because they were pleased at their own sophistication. You almost wished some drunk would scream out ''Pump It Up,'' even if Costello would shoot back, ''Sorry, I'm speaking'' as he did once last night after some impolite burst from cheap seats. You wanted Costello to pump it up; you wanted him to do one of the things he does best, namely, to rework his own material in new and inventive ways, much as he did on his solo college tour of a few years back. Think of what he could have plucked from ''Imperial Bedroom,'' ''King of America'' or ''Blood and Chocolate.'' While this concert was a hit with this audience -- a small (more upscale?) slice of the normal Costello crowd -- it can't be considered much of a success in other terms. Costello has only slated four of these dates in the US. ''The Juliet Letters,'' which garnered highly mixed reviews, is at No. 166 on Billboard's chart after seven weeks. It peaked at No. 125. In the grand scheme of things, this will probably be later viewed as a noble, if slightly disappointing, blip in an illustrious career. Rumor has it Costello's next effort, ''Idiophone,'' will be a rocker. That's not a guarantee of quality, of course, but somehow you've got to think it'll be less of an artistic tussle.