We try not to suggest concerts in this space for which you have no chance of obtaining tickets. By this point, if you don’t have tickets to the Music@Menlo festival, you could be out of luck. But if you were to take a chance on a concert this weekend, or make one phone call that would likely be in vain, or get on one waiting list, or if there were a concert worth standing outside with a really winning smile and a sign pleading for spares this weekend, this is the one. If you’re a single person, or are willing to sit separately from your date, the situation might not be hopeless.
The great thing about this concert, aside from the stunning personnel (clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester, pianists Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, and Wu Han, and on and on) is that it is delightful music, as the concert’s title suggests — but delightful in a way that isn’t laden with overplayed “pops” music. Paul Schoenfeld’s Clarinet Trio and Ernest Chausson’s concerto for piano and string quartet will be discoveries for most people. Both are composers with enough skill to charm and excite without cloying.
I’ve never heard a note by Moritz Moszkowski, who has a Suite on the program. Mendelssohn’s Allegro brilliant, on the other hand, is a familiar piano four-hands encore piece. Written for Clara and Robert Schumann in 1841 and premiered by Clara and Felix on the occasion of the premiere of Robert’s First Symphony (conducted by Felix and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra), it’s a celebratory bon-bon to enjoy unreservedly.