Andras Schiff has been in town for a month now, participating in various events that demonstrate his ability to play well with others. First, he accompanied poetry readings at the 92nd Street Y, then featured his wife Yuuko Shiokawa in sonata performance, and, most recently, found himself

caught between the elegantly crafted quietude of the Panocha Quartet and the impolite rumblings of the R train at Zankel. Finally, on Thursday evening, New York allowed Schiff to be Schiff and the result was a most unusual recital at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Schiff tends toward the narrative form, offering in recent years both the Novelletten of Schumann and those sonatas of Beethoven that most lend themselves to the storyteller’s approach. On this current program, he presented three pieces by Leos Janacek that require a broad, descriptive sensibility in order to communicate them convincingly.

“On an Overgrown Path” is roughly similar in mood and construction to “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The protagonist walks for a while and then en counters a series of aural vignettes with that signature whiff of pantheism that permeates the music of Janaycek. I was surprised to learn that this was the Carnegie premiere of book one of this piece, especially considering the frequency of performance of Czech pianists Rudolf Firkusny and Ivan Moravec over the years. Mr. Schiff was especially adept at emphasizing the sounds of nature throughout; at certain points the birdcalls make one think of the music of Olivier Messiaen. But the piece is rather a long go and warning signs of restlessness began to permeate the hall.

Mr. Schiff is a very skilled programmer, shaping his recitals as if they themselves were literary material. Thus the inclusion of three polkas by Bedrich Smetana provided some much-needed comic relief in this first half of the recital. I was reminded of Charlie Chaplin and some of the improvisatory piano music that many unsung artists, including the young Shostakovich, composed for him in anonymous darkened theaters in the silent movie days. Mr. Schiff toyed a bit with the rhythms of these pieces, slightly altering them from concert dances to reflections on movement itself.

Immediately following these burlesques came the most serious work of the evening in the form of the Janacek Sonata 1.X.1905, a searing description of street violence in his native Moravia. This is normally a highly charged and emotional essay about man’s brutality to man. Mr. Schiff, however, performed it with so much aristocratic detachment as to seem positively unfeeling. One of the most intense memories that I have about music is listening to a performance on the radio of this impassioned work as the Soviets invaded Prague in 1968. Mr. Schiff, though, is a Hungarian. Perhaps he has simply forgotten 1956.

After intermission – when, incidentally, many patrons fled for the exits, there was even more Janacek, this time the impressionistic “In the Mists.” For me, this was the best playing of the night, the pianist bringing a suitably soft touch and judicious pedaling to the party. The telltale sound of programs dropping to the floor, however, indicated that at least some of the members of the audience had indeed entered their own worlds of diaphanous dreams.

Almost as if it were a reward for sitting through so much unfamiliar music, Mr. Schiff offered the B Minor Chopin sonata as the main course of this second half. The crowd seemed more alert and focused as he began, but I was extremely disappointed in this reading. First, it was maddeningly metronomic, performed almost as though it were from a parade (and this is the sonata that does not include the famous funeral march). Second, Mr. Schiff was not his usual accurate self by this time in the evening (and, at two and one half hours for the total program, we were all feeling the strain by this juncture).

Worst, the entire rendition was monochromatic, any given moment satisfying enough perhaps, but simply unvariegated as a totality. Recently having been sorely let down by another Chopin recital – that of Maurizio Pollini – I left this particular soiree decidedly unsatisfied. Even three generous encores of Chopin did little to alleviate my hunger for at least a soupcon of rubato.

Some years ago, I received a rather angry note from the then publicity director at Carnegie. She objected to my use of the phrase “dozens of unsold seats” in a review, pointing out that the seats were indeed sold, although empty. Well, sold or unsold, there were many dozens of empty seats for Andras Schiff. In retrospect, it would have been fine if one of them had been mine.