Having recorded all 32 of the Beethoven piano sonatas, Seymour Lipkin is now paying the same homage to Franz Schubert. Mr. Lipkin brought two of his current explorations aboard Brooklyn’s Bargemusic on Friday evening.

Mr. Lipkin was a student of two of the very best of the last century, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and followed in their footsteps to become a highly respected teacher at both the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School. I have often written the phrase “a student of Seymour Lipkin,” but Friday night was the first time I heard him in the flesh.

Schubert is more difficult than Beethoven for a pianist to interpret. In most cases, Beethoven is foursquare and develops with steady progress. With Schubert, however, a fine performance shatters the notion of linear time. The listener, like an enchanted visitor to Venice, relishes the feeling of being lost in a glorious labyrinth, in no hurry to come back to metronomic groundings.This slightly off-center feel takes years to master.

Mr. Lipkin’s rendition of the posthumous A major Sonata, D.959 was both intricate and ingenious. In the seemingly disproportionately long first movement, he created precisely the right type of temporal construction that kept us all adrift in a musical paradise, with little care of hidden signposts and normal instincts of locomotion. Small touches, including this poet’s ability to almost imperceptibly slow the lyrical melody in the left hand while retaining a steady accompaniment in the right, proved highly impressive.

The Andante was hauntingly beautiful, as only Schubert can be. Unhurried and contemplative, this approach was especially notable for its strange rhythms — not syncopation exactly, but a tiny stutter step before the opening of a melody that introduced each achingly lovely theme just the slightest bit late. The essence of these final masterpieces is that what appears on the printed page as geometric balance sounds, in actuality, vaguely askew in the best of disciplined hands.

For the Rondo Allegretto from this sonata, Mr. Lipkin deconstructs the theme a bit, offering it not as a rolling ode, but clipping it a little to emphasize its natural metrical break. The sonata ended in wisps of melody surrounded by eloquent silences — masterful.

In the first half of the program, Mr. Lipkin authoritatively traversed the A minor Sonata, D. 784 and played four of the Impromptus, the first three of the D. 899 set and the F minor, D.935, No. 4. The latter was a clinic in Schubertian rhythm, the left hand steady in that bizarre meter that bends just a little in the Turkish manner — all the rage in Schubert’s time — and the right a freeflowing balladeer with a healthy sense of the off-kilter. Mr. Lipkin’s ability to include the shortest of hitches and the sighs of slight pauses was incredible. I sat agog, my mouth open in admiration, as I thought of how often I have heard this piece played incorrectly by otherwise great pianists.

There were a few technical problems, a left hand rhythm missing a note here or there, a less than perfect landing on occasion. In the E flat major, the right hand did not produce the most smoothly flowing barcarolle, intended to suggest bobbing up and down on the water. But, no matter — we had the concert hall itself to do that for us.

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Vladimir Feltsman, who gave the first of five Mozart recitals on a custom made fortepiano Thursday evening at the New School, had a rather rude awakening to the American music scene.

The dashing young Russian was hailed in the 1980s as the next Richter, portrayed as a brooding, colorful interpreter of the Eastern big and splashy pieces from Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninoff. He emerged from behind the Iron Curtain and was destined to make American ladies swoon with his extroverted Romanticism.

But this tundra grizzly turned out to be more a Paddington, preferring the delicate poetics of Schumann and Schubert to the wild leaps of Scriabin and Prokofiev. Unfortunately for Mr. Feltsman, his handlers wanted him to wow the public with Slavic melodrama, and he was forced to quickly shift artistic gears while an eager public waited on the other side of the curtain. He never felt comfortable with the repertoire foisted upon him by the publicity people and instead soon became one of New York’s most talented teachers, free to explore the less lurid German music that more suited his thoughtful temperament.

Indulging his scholarly side, Mr. Feltsman is now traversing the complete sonatas of Mozart and has brought to the party not only his expertise but also his new toy, a replica of an Anton Walter fortepiano constructed by Paul McNulty.To their credit, this performer and his instrument maker went for a shiny veneer rather than an antiqued look: this is a piece of modern furniture and proud of it.

It was difficult to tell how much of a role the rather acoustically dull Tishman Auditorium played, but this particular sound on this particular night was quite monochromatic. Notes emerged with less of a ring and more of a thud. This is a common phenomenon for the fortepiano, but I have heard much brighter timbres from Robert Levin employing a similar instrument at both the Weill Recital Hall and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Some of Mr. Feltsman’s upcoming events will take place at the Mannes College Hall, and these may be just a tad more colorful.

For this opening night, the pianist chose the five sonatas written when Wolfgang was all of 19. The performance was typical Feltsman, with flashes of brilliant technique interspersed with sections of hopeless confusion. His slow tempo during more complex passages appeared to be not expressive rubatos but rather practical survival techniques. Overall, however, there was enough dexterity to tip the scales just slightly in this artist’s favor.

At least four of these pieces sound remarkably similar, and there is certainly a danger of overtaxing the patience of the audience. Mr. Feltsman counteracted this boredom factor with some delightful playfulness. In the B flat major, K. 281, he reminded us boisterously that these works were the product not just of a genius but also a teenaged and rebellious personality.

The most famous of the lot is the E flat major, and Mr. Feltsman emphasized its courtly nature expertly. When he is good he is very, very good, and this was also true in the exposure of intricate development in the Allegro moderato of the B flat major. But many other passages were rather bizarre combinations of original score and flailing improvisation. Ultimately, this soloist did not seem sufficiently prepared.