The recent closing of Alice Tully Hall opened the floodgates of memory of this particular venue, but had it been Carnegie Hall that was being renovated yet again, my most vivid memory has to be the piano music of Karlheinz Stockhausen played by Maurizio Pollini in 1999. On Saturday evening, Mr. Pollini opened an all-German recital with two of this necromancer’s most eloquent and revolutionary essays for the keyboard.

Mr. Pollini knows Stockhausen well and matured musically with him as a fraternity brother in Northern Italy — a Germanic association of young lions that emerged in the 1950s. The two pieces on this program — Klavierstuecke VII & VIII — made their premieres together in 1955. Each deals with a reevaluation of linear time, the first slowly, the second rapidly. Their combined structure is roughly equivalent to that of the Two Portraits for Violin and Orchestra of Béla Bartók.

This pianist offered what seemed to be the definitive version. Since Mr. Stockhausen is not really a performer — he did go through his “let me turn on this tape recorder” period in the late 1960s — this reading was as close as possible to an actual composer’s realization. Mr. Pollini made much of the individual sonic moments in the slower piece, artfully utilizing the silences between passages for maximum dramatic effect. After a short orientation period, the audience was eagerly looking forward to each small outburst of notes, and this artist expertly built the suspense to a delicious conclusion.

The second piece is all of two minutes and explores the other end of the temporal telescope, melodic snippets rushing about frenetically. The effect is oddly reminiscent of the tiny last movement of the B Flat Major Sonata of Chopin. Mr. Pollini served this exciting movement with great panache, but it was interrupted by latecomers, whom Carnegie management opted to seat at the conclusion of the first piece. As a result, the short second poem, as delicate as a haiku, was trampled by the herd of patrons who neglected to show up on time.

When Mr. Pollini is on, his interpretations seem to come directly from the mind of the composer. But the rap on him is that he can be so introspective that he forgets to share with the rest of us. This might have been the problem this evening, as his rendition of the B Flat Major Sonata of Beethoven, popularly known as the Hammerklavier, left many of us cold.

After some initial sloppiness, Mr. Pollini settled into the piece, but rode the sustaining pedal unmercifully, turning much of Beethoven’s first two faster movements into ersatz Debussy. Tempo was the culprit in the Adagio sostenuto, as what emerged was more of an Andante, considerably speedier than any previously acceptable interpretation. Perhaps this was a Baroque conception of the performing artist, but lyrical lines were rushed and clipped, the grandiose edifice that Beethoven painstakingly erected turned into an economy motel. As the clangorous turned cacophonous, the fourth movement was little more than overtonal confusion. Mr. Pollini was totally absorbed in his work, seemingly oblivious to the world around him. I thought of the deaf Beethoven, running through the piece at his own piano to double-check its fingering logistics, blissfully unconcerned with the quality of the resultant sound. Arcane is fine; this was incomprehensible.

Mr. Pollini is full of surprises, and perhaps the biggest of all was a relatively standard performance of Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Overpedaled to be sure, but nonetheless eloquent , this version was notable for emphasizing the melancholy of Hoffmann’s imaginary musician. This good effort was, however, considerably less memorable than the Beethovenian mess that left such a sour taste in the ear.