MusicJudy Collins at Symphony Hall last Saturday

JUDY COLLINS looked every bit the goddess Saturday night, as her clear, silky voice lulled the packed Symphony Hall audience into unthinking tranquility.

She carried them all off to Never-Never Land, interrupting a two hour continuum of sweet little nothings in the familiar Judy Collins style only once-with a brief note of social commentary about the Chicago Eight.

Miss Collins achieved a few rare moments of musical tenderness, though her vocal sentimentality was much more often usually hollow and unconvincing. She sang of peace and beauty, and lovers by the side of lilycovered country ponds. Her voice rang clear, but it failed to convey any sense of meaning in the idyllic images she created for her listeners. Judy Collins was like the classic Pine Manor girl whose glowing radiance enchants you, so that you can only nod blindly at her purrings of romantic fantasy.

There was little variety-in either melody or lyrics-and the program only hinted at her ability to handle different kinds of music. Chelsea Morning was much more rhythmic than her other songs, and succeeded in expressing the spirit and vitality of the early morning hours, as the city awakens to another day. But she's done more lively songs before, and seemed unwilling Saturday night to release herself from the laze haze or her more common style of casy-going melancholia. In Roff Kempf's Hello, Hooray, she seemed to reduce herself to a more even role in the group of four instrumentalists, instead of allowing the other members of the ensemble to come up to her majestic level.

The audience watched her grow up from childhood to maturity in her rendition of the Collins song, My Father. She began by recounting with youthful innocence that "my father always promised us that we would live in France." She recreated her dream of "boating on the Seine," and led one's thoughts to Renoir and his velvety impressions of summer days and the sparkling glint of light on the river's water. Later, her voice grew mellow and wise as she sang "the colors of my father's dreams faded" and the audience could look back with her in knowing retrospect, as Gene Taylor drew his bow sadly across the strings of his bass, and Miss Collins finalized her memories, skillfully plucking out tender notes on her 12-string guitar.

Her treatment of Leonard Cohen's Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye was almost as good, as each man in the audience saw her telling him, "I loved you in the morning... with your hair upon the pillow..." And, with closed eyes, she whispered "my love goes with you," capturing us all.

Had Judy Collins only showed her admiring audience that she cared last Saturday night, she might have been more successful; her unwillingness to reach out sincerely was a disappointment. She sang only one encore, Both Sides Now, and seemed to say with her eyes, "It's been a long night and I can't wait to get the hell out of here" while she sang the words, "I've looked at life from both sides now." Her most expressive line was "It's life's illusions I recall" -which could have been the credo of her Symphony Hall appearance: when she finished she walked smilingly off the stage, waving a hollow "V" for peace.