It’s a small world after all. The Trio Con Brio Copenhagen, which performed on Friday evening at the Weill Recital Hall, consists of the Korean sisters Soo-Jin and Soo-Kyung Hong and Danish pianist Jens Elvekjaer. The group was formed in Vienna and won a competition in 2005 under the auspices of the KLR Trio. Part of their prize was this opportunity to perform in the hallowed halls of Carnegie.

Although reasonably competent technically, the group seemed lost from the beginning. Stylistically, their take on Haydn’s C-major Trio, Hob. XV: 27 was about as far from the 18th century as possible. The opening Allegro was characterized by the big Romantic gesture and exaggerated phrasing exuberance. The Andante was pleasant enough, considering the rather colorless sound that would haunt this entire evening, but the final Presto lacked even a hint of delicacy or refinement. There is so much more to fine music-making than hitting most of the notes.

It may be important to set your sights high, but selecting the A-minor Trio of Ravel might have been a tactical error. Like his only string quartet, this piece depends heavily on a particular sound, a translucent luminosity with extraordinary tensile strength. This ensemble simply does not have the ability to produce this type of utterance, and their pallid alternative was particularly unsatisfying.

Additionally, the requisite demands of the composer for spidery dexterousness were a little out of reach for this threesome. The Assez vif was leaden, clunky, the concluding Animé earthbound and murky. The overall sound never blossomed. The cellist, Ms. Soo-Kyung Hong, committed a major gaffe while disengaging her mute. Instead of waiting until the Passacaille was over, she went ahead and removed it while her sister and their pianist were wrapping up this music and made a horrendous squeaking noise in the process.

As well as the Brahms B-major Trio, the second half of the program featured the American premiere of “Phantasmagoria,” by Bent Sorensen. Described by the composer as a “shadow play in darkness” — which sounds interesting if you don’t think about it for too long — the work was dedicated to Trio Con Brio. Here they appeared to be more in their element. Perhaps, like the Kronos Quartet or other specialty groups, they belong only to the 21st century.

This new work was actually quite inventive. Structurally akin to the Five Movements for String Quartet of Anton Webern, the vocabulary is more that of Krzysztof Penderecki, straying from but hovering about tonality. In its play with small rhythmic figures, it was also reminiscent of the “Kafka Fragments” of Gyorgy Kurtag. Some of these figures are as small as two notes, and the sisters shepherded these mini-bits confidently, producing such spectral phenomena as rounds, fugues, and little offbeat dances. There is even a bit of humming to be done. Is it great art? Perhaps not, but it was well-played. The crowd rewarded this effort with tepid applause of short duration, but, for me, this was the highlight of an otherwise lackluster recital.

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American violinist Joan Kwuon recently recorded the Sonata for Violin and Piano of André Previn. Desiring not just an accompanist but an equal partner, she chose Sir André as pianist for her recital on Saturday evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ms. Kwuon scores well in all the standard categories. She has a solid technique and a proper sense of style and balance. Her employment of a Guarneri del Gesù violin leads to a rich sound that she husbands with a reasonable amount of vibrato. She presented a varied and well-constructed program and played with great confidence. Where she may be deficient is in the area of expressivity.

Beginning with the A-major Sonata of Brahms, Ms. Kwuon intoned comfortably if not profoundly. The piece was written while the composer was in the thrall of a much younger woman and quotes from two of his contemporary love songs, “Come Soon” and “Like melodies it passes lightly through my mind.” There was nothing wrong with Ms. Kwuon’s statement of these themes, but, if she were a singer, general judgment would pronounce her interpretations a bit cold. Mr. Previn was not a great deal of help, as he appeared to be sight-reading, owlishly staring at the printed music all night and often omitting individual notes or, occasionally, entire passages. He did keep his volume level down, but this type of self-effacement sometimes left Ms. Kwuon out on a limb.

Prokofiev’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 94 bis — bis meaning essentially a subset or variation on the original — has long since eclipsed the flute version. Ms. Kwuon and Mr. Previn did a good job of emphasizing the martial rhythms of the piece — Prokofiev was, quite naturally, deeply affected by the war — but failed to establish that signature etching in acid, that acerbic wit, that hint of the sardonic that has come to be so closely associated with this composer.

One of the fascinating elements of this piece is its stylistic variety. The opening movement is Handelian in character, as is the four-movement structure of the work as a whole. Here Ms. Kwuon was fine and seemed more conversant with the idiom. When the jocular Scherzo followed, however, it was not as light on its feet as it should have been.

The final Allegro con brio is the most rebellious, but this evening entered and exited too politely. Throughout the sonata, Prokofiev introduces snippets from some of his most subversive works, in particular “The Love for Three Oranges” and “Cinderella,” but the coloration in this current version did not lend itself to either the ironic or macabre. A near miss of an effort, but a miss nonetheless. The better half was the second, as Ms. Kwuon was right at home with the ebulliently refined language of the Sonata No. 10 in G major of Beethoven. Written for a fiddler named Pierre Rode, it had its premiere with none other than the Archduke Rudolph at the keyboard. This usually means that the piano part is rather elementary — as opposed to the “Archduke Trio,” which Beethoven made purposely difficult to keep his noble friend in his place — and, in fact, the piece is a marvel of sunny communication through simplicity. The pair this evening took the measure of it, Ms. Kwuon catching just the right sense of gemütlichkeit. Her overall approach is more than fine, but I found myself whistling, as I left the auditorium, not Brahms or Beethoven, or even Prokofiev, but rather that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?”