Hungarian pianist András Schiff was back at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening, continuing his three-year series presenting the 32 sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven. Mr. Schiff is just in the middle of his journey at present, and a respectable, if not an overflowing, crowd came along for the ride. Judging by the number of unoccupied seats, there are probably still good tickets available for tonight’s next installment.

For years now, Mr. Schiff has been exploring large bodies of work in this manner. He traversed Schumann here in New York and then spent a couple of seasons with Bach. These concerts are much more than entertaining and edifying; they are also educative. Hearing pieces as parts of larger concepts alters their intellectual weight, increasing their historical significance.

Mr. Schiff proceeds roughly in order, but tailors each program for compatibility and length. For this recital, he eschewed the big, famous sonatas. This night there were no nicknames, no universally familiar melodies, no grand gestures. Instead, he picked clean the skeletal system of the Beethovenian corpus.

The shape of the program was unusual, as Mr. Schiff presented four sonatas in the first half and only one in the second. Quickly, he established his strengths in the G minor Sonata, No. 19. His playing is limpid and pristine, elegant and aristocratic. As difficult as it must be to communicate this music so precisely, Mr. Schiff exhibits no signs of effort, no unnecessary manual motion, no gesticulating, no histrionics. Each key is struck in its exact center and pedaling is kept to a tasteful minimum. If it’s the notes that you are after, then András Schiff is your man.

Playing the G major, No. 20, immediately thereafter emphasized its nature as a companion piece. Here, Mr. Schiff launched into a series of squeaky-clean runs and perfectly spaced arpeggiated material, demonstrating his ability to divide a line into equidistant segments no matter how many there are per measure of music. Quite impressive, unobjectionable pianism.

Numbering systems in classical music are splendidly Byzantine, and so the Ninth, 10th, and 11th sonatas that followed were actually all written after the 19th and 20th. In the E major, Mr. Schiff dabbled in the poetic, producing suggestions of the strident or martial in the opening Allegro without pounding or exaggerating. Now in the world of stricter sonata form — the first two works on the program were more like fantasias than formal sonatas — this pianist clung to timeless standards of balance and grace, every note in place and, when struck, seemingly the only possible tone to please and comfort the listener. If there was a lack of the irritant that engenders the pearl, then so be it. This was music in formal wear — black and white, but no color.

The B Flat major, Op. 22, is a four-movement work, a little shorter than a fully fleshed out later Beethoven sonata, but it seemed of leviathan proportions after the quartet of bagatelles in the first half of this concert. The piece might even qualify as familiar in thematic content, depending on the listener’s conversance with the cycle as a whole. Mr. Schiff committed a few finger slips in the inner voices of this rendition, which endeared him to me after a virtually flawless first hour, but overall was his usual clear, declarative self. Taking the Adagio at a brisker pace than most of his colleagues emphasized the debt that Beethoven felt toward the Baroque in this particular essay.

What to make of all this? Well, if you attend the entire survey, you are bound to realize some nuggets of illumination about the value and sheer genius of the cycle. Few living artists will lay these pieces out for you so faithfully. If you can put up with playing that is a little on the dull end of the spectrum, this may be the series for you.