New York audiences who experienced any number of farewell appearances by Luciano Pavarotti may be forgiven a bit of healthy skepticism while attending what was billed as the final local concert of Alfred Brendel at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening. Mr. Brendel, who has many other interests beyond keyboard performance, is planning to conclude his performing at the end of this year but, of course, we know that the last effort at this most hallowed of auditoriums is the most important.

Although moving to the Austrian capital at the age of 21, and at one time one of the finest exponents of the works of Arnold Schoenberg, Mr. Brendel chose for his valedictory event only music of the First Viennese School. His career has been a model of intellectual pianism, although his Apollonian approach has not always been met with critical acclaim. An artist of high integrity, he would not want his audience to evaluate his current performance through a roseate overlay of 50 years of steady pianism, but rather on how this particular effort fared.

After a lapidary set of Variations in F Minor by Joseph Haydn, Mr. Brendel launched the Sonata in F Major K. 533/ K. 494, perhaps the best known of all the sonatas of Mozart. The classical balance of this rendition was a bit askew, the opening Allegro much faster and louder than the closing Rondo. But the gambit worked, the piece sounding fresh and new in these capable hands. Mr. Brendel was in a no nonsense mood, not pausing more than a beat between movements. He must be anxious to get home to London to enjoy his retirement.

He ended the first part of the evening with a rousing account of the Sonata quasi una fanstasia, the 13th sonata of Beethoven. This was a wild ride, with somewhat exaggerated crescendos and little pauses of rubato that caught the listener pleasantly unaware. Ted Williams hit a home run in his last at-bat and it seemed that Alfred Brendel was about to do the same.

There is no Mahler’s Ninth Symphony for pianists, no one standard work that expresses the complex emotions of achievement, regret, and ultimate farewell, but choosing one of the posthumous sonatas of Schubert was the next best thing. Taking up the entire second half of the program, this performance of the B Flat Major, D. 960 was significant as a statement and, for better or worse, vintage Alfred Brendel.

Recently at the Morgan Library, Robert Levin performed this monumental work at a fortepiano and immediately afterwards Claude Frank reprised it on a modern pianoforte. Mr. Brendel offered yet a third way of presenting the material. His view is a decidedly analytical one and his metrical precision unfolded the Molto moderato in a declarative manner. The occasional wrong chord or finger slip notwithstanding, this was a relatively clean reading, but what was missing was that sense of wonder, that uniquely Schubertian feeling of being lost in time and space. For a man who writes poetry, Mr. Brendel is a rather prosaic interpreter of the classics.

Similarly, the incredible Andante sostenuto, one of the most heart-wrenching in the literature, was laid bare before us all, but in a skeletal form. As in many of his previous traversals, the printed music sprang to life, but the shades between the dots and lines were noticeably absent. The crowd, including patrons sitting on the stage, loved every moment.

All of us will miss him, but especially his critics. After all, we won’t have Alfred Brendel to kick around anymore.