Maurizio Pollini, who performed at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon, possesses the uncanny ability to strike each note in its exact physical center. Regardless of repertoire, he never produces any unwanted or extraneous overtones.The pianist is all business, striding out to his instrument with that Groucho Marx walk of his, the head arriving before the rest of the body. Applause is superfluous to him, even intrusive.

Various critics have anointed Mr. Pollini a cold and impersonal technician, but I have attended concerts wherein his playing has scaled the heights of emotional integrity. Now a venerable figure from the cutting edge of the 1960s and ’70s, he can be extremely eloquent in even the most forbidding of scores: His Nono and Stockhausen are white-hot. But there have been troubling signs in recent years; his Chopin program at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark in 2004, for example, was antiseptically frigid.

Based on Sunday’s recital, the pendulum seems to have swung at least partially back for this important artist. The first half was all Chopin, the second all Liszt.

Mr. Pollini began extremely modestly with two Nocturnes from Op. 55, the F minor and the E-flat major. The former was an essay in disciplined quietude, the latter an exploration of an emotional subject sans big gesture.The playing was clean and distinct, although the net effect was somewhat bland.

Next came the famous Ballade in G minor, Op. 23. Mr. Pollini performed the piece as written – which is to say he left out most of the dramatic and empathetic freight. There was some mitigation to his forensic scientist’s approach, however, and even one slight pause at a spot in the wellknown melody where almost anyone else would have been silent for a bit longer. But we must take what solace we can from this bit of rubato. At least Mr. Pollini is not a complete fundamentalist. Some narrative pieces followed, specifically Two Nocturnes, Op. 48 and the Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Op. 44.

This was technically superb digitizing, dexterous and incisive. Emotionally,however, it was rather underwhelming, begging the question of why a pianist would consciously choose to present this type of repertoire in such an analytical manner. Mr. Pollini’s answer seems to be “because I can,” but this intensive degree of sanitization left me a bit wanting.

The Liszt set was a little different. Mr. Pollini designed a suite out of four separate pieces, all of which deal with feelings of doom. “Nuages gris” (“Gray Clouds”) and “Unstern” (“Misfortune”) are both aptly named. Again they were presented flawlessly, but because Mr. Pollini eschews that big gesture, the meteorological darkness in the left hand was never featured or pronounced. I didn’t feel depressed so much as out of sorts.

Liszt wrote “La Lugubre Gondola I” as a premonition of Wagner’s death while visiting his son-in-law in Venice in 1882. In this Pollini version, the boat had a bit too even of a keel for my taste. The last part of the quartet of works played without pause was “Richard Wagner – Venezia,” a work so rare that it took over 100 years for it to be performed at Carnegie Hall, and that was by Mr. Pollini in 1989.As a scholar, he is first-rate.

Finally, Mr. Pollini produced a noteperfect version of that Everest of the keyboard, Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. I don’t want to minimize the degree of difficulty of pulling this off – these were highly impressive mechanics – but Mr. Pollini was missing the point. Liszt wrote these pyrotechnic psychodramas so that he could make the ladies swoon and the gentlemen gasp. There was no sense of that level of thrill at Sunday’s performance.

I wouldn’t have guessed that the pianist of whom Mr. Pollini would remind me on this day would be Vladimir Horowitz. But the combination of repertoire, location, and time of day made me remember that lion fondly. Horowitz would only play at Carnegie at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, because he didn’t want anybody to doze during his recitals. It doesn’t say much for Mr. Pollini that several patrons within earshot were rather loudly visiting Morpheus this particular day.