Music @ Menlo starts on odd note with two-piano piece - San Francisco Chronicle

Bach didn’t actually compose for the piano, although there is some evidence that he inspected one or two of the newfangled contraptions shortly before his death in 1750. So it was a little surprising to see the summer season of the Music @ Menlo festival – three weeks of chamber music dedicated to Bach and his influence – getting under way Friday night with a program devoted to music for two pianos.

That sense of oddness kept up through the entire first half of the concert at the Center for the Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton, a chronological tour through music by Bach, Schubert and Schumann. It was all well executed, but if there was a common thread running through the evening, it was hard to discern.

It was only after intermission – with a brisk and extravagantly clear-toned account of Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion – that the proceedings suddenly clicked into focus. Here at last was music that was speaking to the concert’s stated theme in an unmistakable way.

Written in 1937 on a commission from the Swiss patron Paul Sacher, Bartók’s Concerto revels almost exclusively in the piano’s hard-edged sonorities. With its busy rhythms and crisp harmonic tension, it’s practically a piece for percussion ensemble, and it redefines the very nature of two-piano interaction.

For Friday’s performance, pianist Wu Han (the festival’s co-founder and artistic director, along with her husband, cellist David Finckel) was joined by Gilbert Kalish, along with percussionists Christopher Froh and Ian Rosenbaum. Together, these four musicians offered a wonderfully streamlined and evocative reading of the piece – fearlessly clangorous in the opening movement, tender and thoughtful in the central slow movement, and unabashedly joyous in the lighthearted concluding rondo.

The first half of the program was more variable in its successes. The opening rendition of Bach’s Concerto for Two Pianos in C, BWV 1061, was beset by some balance issues, the result of combining a tiny string ensemble with two big, modern concert grands. And the two soloists, Derek Han and Gloria Chien, didn’t always see eye to eye on matters of tempo and rhythm.

Still, there were stretches of eloquence and dramatic flair, particularly in the energetic and intricate finale. And in the slow movement, the two pianists – left entirely to their own devices as the string players sat silent – worked up a rich contrapuntal weave.

After Han and Hyeyeon Park made their way through Schubert’s Rondo in A for Piano Four Hands – an unobjectionable but not very gripping diversion – Chien returned to join Han for a wonderfully strange and unknown piece by Schumann, the Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Two Cellos and Horn. The music itself is as unpredictable as the instrumentation, moving suavely but surprisingly between bravura displays and tender choral passages. The performance – which featured cogent contributions from Finckel, cellist Laurence Lesser and especially hornist Kevin Rivard – made a strong case for it.

Music @ Menlo: Through Aug. 10. Center for the Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton, 555 Middlefield Rd., Atherton. $ 20 – $ 72. (650) 331-0202. www.musicatmenlo.org.