On Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, Gidon Kremer and Krystian Zimerman did something that has become virtually routine: They played all three Brahms sonatas for violin and piano. In the middle of last season, New York saw three such recitals in the space of three weeks. That is, three violin-and-piano pairings played all three of those sonatas. It was a rash.

To me, this is an example of the completeness craze from which music suffers. These days, a pianist is not apt to play a few Debussy preludes; he’s apt to play all of Book I, or all of Book II. (Thankfully, we are usually spared both books in one sitting.) It has become uncool for a pianist to play a single Chopin ballade; he must play all four, or at least two. This is bizarre.

The three Brahms violin-and-piano sonatas are all excellent works, all masterpieces. But they are not meant to be played together. They are not a set, they are not a cycle; they are standalone sonatas. Why insist on yoking them to one another?

But such programs are all the rage, and so are one-composer evenings. Everyone has to be nice ‘n’ musicological. Today’s programmers think we should eat much the same food for every course.

Well, enough of my griping. On to more griping: If you’re going to do all three Brahms sonatas, you might as well do them well. And Carnegie Hall certainly had two distinguished musicians on its stage Wednesday night: Mr. Kremer is the famed Latvian violinist, and Mr. Zimerman is the famed Polish pianist. The latter is especially admired for his Brahms, which is knowing, smooth, and moving. He has often held audiences spellbound with, for example, his Brahms intermezzos.

Mr. Kremer would not seem a natural Brahms player, given his severity and intellectuality. But a musician of his caliber should be able to play anything.

The two played all three sonatas, all right, but they did not play them in order: They began with No. 2 in A major, and proceeded with No. 1 in G major, and ended with No. 3 in D minor. That may make sense, according to programmatic logic. But I say, in for a penny, in for a pound. If you’re going to be all musicological, do the sonatas in order. Otherwise, play a real, varied recital!

In general, Messrs. Kremer and Zimerman played the sonatas in an unusually retiring, modest, self-effacing way. Often this way was mousy. There is much gentleness in these sonatas, but there is also turbulence, passion, emotion — Romanticism. As a disapproving fellow critic in the aisle said, these performances were all nostalgia, all the time. That does a disservice to Brahms.

Mr. Zimerman is no wallflower — but he seemed to be tailoring his playing to Mr. Kremer’s. On his own, he would have been far more rhapsodic, bigger, where appropriate. Indeed, he sometimes seemed to be trying to burst the nostalgia bubble. And Mr. Zimerman played extraordinarily well. Let me count a few of the ways.

He demonstrated a superb singing tone, or singing line. He rebuked all those pianists who say,”What can I do? It’s a percussion instrument, and a note starts dying as soon as you hit it.” Baloney. A good pianist can overcome, and Mr. Zimerman does. Relatedly, he is an extremely shrewd pedaler.

And the sheer control he exhibited was astounding. For example, his playing in the scherzo of the D-minor sonata was a lesson in weightedness: the proper application of weight to the notes involved. All through the evening, he displayed enviable virtuosity, but also complete relaxedness. An easy virtuoso: what a joy.

And, at some point, I noticed that he missed no notes. It was like hearing a dog not barking. No one should care a great deal about missed notes — a live performance is not a studio product, thank goodness — but I’m not sure Mr. Zimerman missed a single one.

As for the violinist, he did not have his best night, or anything like it. I found myself wishing that we were listening to a piano recital. And I say this is a longtime admirer of Mr. Kremer.

He is not a violinist known for beauty of sound, and he was true — very true — to his reputation on Wednesday night. He offered little warmth, little bloom, little soul. Beauty of sound isn’t everything, far from it; but it isn’t nothing, especially in the Brahms sonatas. Mr. Kremer’s want of sound — want of beauty, want of warmth — was especially bothersome in Brahms’s slow movements. In that of the D minor, Mr. Kremer was just about as ugly as you will ever hear a top violinist be.

But Mr. Kremer will never lay a total egg on you — he’s too smart and gifted for that. His intelligence is always present, even when his technique is shot. I should report that his best playing of the evening came at the beginning of the D minor, where he followed Brahms’s line exquisitely.

Anyway, on to the next monochromatic evening …