Bychkov, Parisian Orchestra at Segerstrom : Orchestre de Paris blends a Franck piece critics love to hate with a handsomely done new atonal work.

No program that ends with the leaden repetitions of the Symphony in D minor by Cesar Franck can be a total success, but the French agenda offered by the Orchestre de Paris, conductor Semyon Bychkov and duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque at the Orange County Performing Arts Center over the weekend did achieve distinction.

Though it closed with that familiar work--one some of us critics love to hate--it did also include a newish and attractive piece by Henri Dutilleux and Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos, a jolly relic of the 1930s only the most curmudgeonly can resist.

The new Dutilleux item was “Mystere de l’Instant” (misaccented in the Orange County Philharmonic Society’s program), an essay in sound-manipulation for string orchestra, with added cymbalom and percussion.

Though thoroughly atonal, the quarter-hour piece, written for a 1989 premiere in Switzerland, proves accessible and engaging as it toys imaginatively with an arsenal of textures and a catalogue of musical events. The orchestra from the French capital gave it a handsome and careful first local performance.

As they had Tuesday in Pasadena, the Labeque sisters brought discipline, strong fingers and great elan to their performance Friday night in Segerstrom Hall.

There may be many more colors and emotional tints in the Poulenc work than they discovered (there also are many more possible nuances in the orchestral parts than this ensemble delivered), but the Labeques’ reading offered honesty and all the notes, sometimes played brilliantly--or overbrilliantly, as these two tend to do.

Closing the evening, Bychkov & Co. achieved a perfectly acceptable performance--one colored nicely by good soloism and well-behaved wind-playing--of the Franck Symphony.

The orchestra--at its loudest, underpowered, and at its softest, poorly integrated--is not a great one. But, when fully concentrating, it does give its music director accomplished music-making. If that director were in a position to offer his players more inspiration, who knows?