The pianist Dick Hyman began his 80th birthday party Saturday night with “Young at Heart,” though he played this sometimes sentimental song anything but reverentially. Rather, Mr. Hyman charged through it, part stride and all syncopation, incorporating descending, spiraling lines that paraphrased “Jitterbug Waltz” and a few quotes from “Symphony Sid.” Then, turning to the crowd at the 92nd Street Y, he said, “It was either [‘Young at Heart’] or ‘Old Man River.'”

The Y stage was decked out more like a party than a concert, with balloons everywhere and Mr. Hyman’s family scattered about, but this opener was a clear sign that the pianist didn’t wanted to celebrate his 80th by receiving a gold watch or resting on his considerable laurels. In fact, the first of his pianist guests to solo, Bill Charlap (who entered with a mouthful of potato chips), seemed to be playing harder and more brilliantly than ever — rather than taking it easy on his longtime mentor, it was as if he wanted to give Mr. Hyman a royal butt-kicking for his birthday.

Wiping the crumbs and grease from his hands, Mr. Charlap dove into a stunning reading of “Where or When” that left one to worry whether the rest of the concert would be able to live up to it. He opened with the bridge and played the first chorus ad lib, drifting into tempo like a ship without a sail, then, joined by bassist Jay Leonhart, essayed the second chorus as a ballad but with absolutely perfect rhythmic assurance. The duo built to a piano-bass exchange that really was “all that and a bag of chips.”

Yet Mr. Charlap was not so tacky as to steal the show from the man of the hour. He knew Mr. Hyman was not to be shown up on this or any other occasion. The two flew into a dual-piano, harmonic vivisection of “I’ll Remember April,” in which even the slow introduction was brutally fast. Tearing the melody and chords asunder, the pair took it through a Latin passage (aided by drummer Eddie Locke), a pair of dark and menacing solo sequences by Mr. Charlap, and an unaccompanied four-handed cadenza. Mr. Hyman was not about to have his butt kicked by a whippersnapper half his age.

Mr. Hyman announced early on that the concert was part of the long-running “Jazz Piano at the Y” series, so the pianists were the focal points and everyone else — including two horns, a rhythm section, and two singers — were merely added attractions. So when Mr. Charlap played behind the vocalist Annette Sanders on “A Sleepin’ Bee,” I found myself more drawn to the accompanist than the spotlighted star, although he was hardly trying to pull focus. Likewise, when Mr. Hyman played behind the clarinetist Evan Christopher, it was hard not to pay more attention to the pianist, even though Mr. Christopher steered through a tricky arrangement of the 1930 waltz “In a Little Spanish Town,” which started in 6/4 funk before shifting to a swinging four.

Along the way, trumpeter Joe Wilder (“I Cover the Waterfront”) and guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (“Honeysuckle Rose”) both had chances to shine. Mr. Pizzarelli got the biggest hand of the evening for his lightning-fast chorus on the Fats Waller jam-session favorite (which built to a back-and-forth routine on “Ebony Rhapsody” with Mr. Leonhart), but his exquisite, Oscar Moore-influenced solo on “Embraceable You” was much more like classic Pizzarelli to my ears.

Still, it was the pianists’ evening, and the major set piece of the show was the opener of the second half, in which all four offered a take on George Gershwin’s “Liza.” Derek Smith, whose trademark is to play faster than Art Tatum on Red Bull, substituted harmonic density for his usual speed; Mr. Charlap chewed up the changes in a somewhat lighter but no less breathless vein; and Mr. Hyman played it more classically at first, gradually introducing a pumping stride left hand.

Really, Mr. Hyman was setting it up for the fourth pianist to knock it out of the park, and that she did. Meral Guneyman, a Turkish-born player who recently recorded an album of four-handed duos with Mr. Hyman, rhapsodized the Gershwin melody in cascading waves of impressionistic chords, and shortly after did the same for “Embraceable You.” Ms. Guneyman then showed she could play in other ways, too, joining Mr. Hyman in a duet on an original called “Rap #3,” in which the two played in a percussive, highly syncopated style reminiscent of Billy Strayhorn’s “Tonk.”

The singers in these shows are rarely (with some major exceptions) up to the level of the instrumentalists, and on Saturday both singers had their best moments in the second half. Ms. Sanders shone with Mr. Charlap on Sondheim’s “Not While I’m Around,” and Carol Woods, who had previously sung a swinger (“Them There Eyes”) and a ballad (“Lover Man”), showed that her real strength is belting the blues in an extroverted, theatrical style. Ms. Woods climaxed the show with a couple of dynamic 12-bar choruses on “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water”; unfortunately, because this was the finale, Eddie Miller’s classic blues was divided up and shared by the entire company, when it was clear that everyone wanted to hear Ms. Woods sing at least a few more choruses on her own.

Throughout, Mr. Hyman showed that though he has joined the octogenarian club (Messrs. Pizzarelli and Wilder are 81 and 85, respectively) and relinquished control of the Y’s Jazz in July series to Mr. Charlap, he does not intend to go gently into that good night. A swell party it was.

wfriedwald@nysun.com