What is your favorite piece of classical guitar music? Many would answer Asturias by Isaac Albeniz, and hearing it performed Sunday at the Walter Reade Theater by Xuefei Yang should have been a thrilling experience, but for one problem: It wasn’t written for the guitar.

Albeniz was a Catalan who made his pianistic debut in Barcelona at the age of four, eventually traveling the globe in search of new stimuli and exotic rhythmic combinations. He is often thought of as a fine composer for the guitar (Asturias and Granada alone would have accomplished that), and yet he never actually composed a note for what he would have considered merely a folk vehicle. It was the masterful arrangements of Andres Segovia that brought their original composer’s piano music a revitalized world fame.

Ms. Yang is a true trailblazer, the very first guitarist in all of China to study at a music school and the first to make the great leap forward to study internationally, at Britain’s Royal Academy. Ms. Yang demonstrated at her recital how far apart European and East Asian cultures are to this day.

Technically secure if not flawless, Ms. Yang performed a diverse program in a decidedly nondiverse manner. Every piece was intoned in exactly the same manner, a quiet, dignified but rather too polite sensibility that never quite achieved delicacy or clarity, but often seemed rather tedious and gingerly. Asturias should be extremely passionate, with the soul of flamenco coursing through its veins. But Ms. Yang’s version was oddly bloodless, accurate as far as it went, but never heart-pounding. More impressive was her rendition of Sevilla, also by Albeniz, but only because the piece is more relaxed and light.

Outside of an encore piece originally written for the pipa, the closest that Ms. Yang came to her own tradition were three pieces written by a Welshman, Stephen Goss, who fashioned a suite of movements inspired by Chinese films and commissioned by Ms. Yang. The excerpted trio of mood settings was actually quite fascinating.

The Blue Kite is a symbol of the spirit of freedom surviving during the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Goss employed much fluttering and impressive harmonics to depict the free-floating kite as an emblem of the human spirit. The second piece, Yellow Earth, tells of a woman and her providing solace by singing a folk song. The song in question turned out to be one by that famous Chinese composer Gustav Mahler from Das Lied von der Erde, itself inspired by the poetry of Li Tai Po.

For the final section of the suite, Ms. Yang strapped a metal device onto her foot and stomped out accompaniment to her exotic strummings in evocation of the Peking Opera. These interesting tableaux were the highlights of the concert, and provided a welcome break from the otherwise soporific versions of the more standard Western items, which included pieces by Sor and Villa Lobos.

There was a certain academic quality to this recital that resulted in its lack of liveliness. It was a tactical error to conclude the printed program with four etudes of Villa Lobos, since we were left with the impression that a certain by rote technical exploration was the idée fixe of the experience as a whole. This was a classic example of a musician who has mastered all of the notes but virtually none of the music.

One exception seemed to be a sensitive realization of Un sueno en la Floresta by the Paraguayan composer Barrios Mangore. This was a sweet performance with at least a hint at the mysterious floating world of the dream. If only Ms. Yang were more in touch with the center of the other pieces on the program.

Segovia fans will recognize the Prelude No. 1 of Villa Lobos as one of the master’s most commonly performed jewels. But any of them in this audience must have been at least a bit disappointed in such a desiccated version. But Ms. Yang is young and now living in the West. Perhaps she will discover this music from a new perspective given some time to reorient herself.