Each summer, pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel, the artistic directors of the chamber music festival Music@Menlo, settle on a theme for that year’s programming. Then the festival concerts explore that theme, its sources and its influences.
This season, the festival’s 21st, focuses on Beethoven, which is about as all-encompassing a subject as Western classical music has to offer. More striking, however, is the way the festival’s lineup — hitherto limited almost exclusively to music by white male composers — has at last found space for the work of such composers as Louise Farrenc, Clara Schumann, Jessie Montgomery and Wang Jie.
Because the festival’s schedule is always chronological, those offerings are due later in the summer. The opening concert program, “Baroque Splendor,” is devoted to music by Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and others.