Joshua Bell had a rough start on Wednesday night, but he recovered, to give a solid violin recital. That was a relief, because a musician so accomplished as Mr. Bell should not lay an egg.

Last April, he played a recital at Carnegie Hall that was one of the best events of the season. Those who heard him in Schubert, Grieg, and Ravel will not likely forget it. And Mr. Bell was equally superb in an all-Dvorak chamber concert last December, in Zankel Hall.

Wednesday night’s recital took place in Avery Fisher Hall, not the most hospitable place for a recital – but the better musicians, including violinists, overcome that inhospitableness (an acoustical inhospitableness, I mean). And Mr. Bell largely did.

With the pianist Jeremy Denk, he opened with one of the glories of the violin literature: Brahms’s Sonata No. 1 in G, Op. 78. In this work, the violinist should not so much enter as steal in, barely noticeable. It should be as though the music has already been in progress, and the violinist is merely continuing.

Joshua Bell is very good at this – but not on this occasion. He entered sort of clumsily, seeming uncertain. The rhythm was unsteady. And the rest of the first movement did not represent him well, either.

He made errors most atypical of him: inelegant pizzicato; poor intonation; ugly sound. Worse, he was mannered, exaggerating ritards, fussing over phrases. The interpretive and technical assurance that one associates with him was absent.

Mr. Denk, however, was in fine form, playing in true Brahmsian style. And it falls to him to open the second movement, the Adagio, which he did beautifully. His partner, thank goodness, was more confident here, shaping the music nicely.

Mr. Bell began the final movement with the right anxiety, but, as he played on, his intonation was still unsure. Moreover, he was a little polite, a little shy. Sure, this movement has some delicacy, but it also has some meat to relish. Mr. Bell might have tucked into it more, giving the music more body, even some of what – in opera, particularly – we call slancio.

The recital continued with the hit Saint-Saens sonata: No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75. In this, Mr. Bell was more himself, exercising one of his specialties: Romanticism with restraint. Of course, good Romanticism should always include restraint. Perhaps he had been slightly afraid of the Brahms, an almost holy work – or if not afraid, overly reverential. There was no such problem in the Saint-Saens.

Throughout the work, Mr. Bell engaged in honest music-making, with no self-consciousness. His Adagio was practically a lullaby, with Mr. Denk contributing dreamily as well. They attacked the closing movement – Allegro molto – excitingly. This is a perpetual-motion flight, a whirligig, and Mr. Bell was just slightly tight in it, but still musical. Mr. Denk was quite smooth in his Brooks Smith act.

(Sorry, but when I hear this sonata, I can’t get Jascha Heifetz – his recording – out of my ear. Brooks Smith was his pianist.)

After intermission, the musicians offered Janacek’s sonata. They were a little late, the composer’s big anniversary year having ended on New Year’s Eve. (We were celebrating his 150th anniversary – to death.) But it’s good to know we’re allowed to play Janacek in non-anniversary years.

The musicians were arresting, paying admirable attention to rhythm, making rests count. Mr. Denk showed no little technical facility. You might complain that Mr. Bell was just a little too refined in parts of this music – lacking a certain rawness, baldness. But he had Janacekian y tension, nervousness, which is good enough.

Next he turned to Bartok’s Hungarian Folk Tunes, arranged by Josef Szigeti (the composer’s friend and frequent performing partner). The young Hoosier, Mr. Bell, has always shown great respect for the violinistic past – Kreisler, Elman, all of them. For instance, his all-Kreisler album is one of the most distinguished Romantic violin albums I know.

As he began his first folk tune, a hearing aid in the hall went haywire. Mr. Bell stopped until it was turned off (or otherwise calmed). He quipped, “I wanted to start over anyway.”

I could tell hearing-aid stories until the cows came home, but let me confine myself to two. One night in Carnegie Hall, Dawn Upshaw began to sing, when a hearing aid sang, too. She stopped, scrunched up her face, and said, “What is that noise?” – while pointing around the hall. And the pianist Garrick Olhsson had just begun a recital, too – in Avery Fisher Hall – when a hearing aid went nuts. He stopped, with a grimace. And I once endured two full acts of “Parsifal” at the Met with an errant hearing aid.

Okay, that was three stories, but I was still restrained. And one must pity those who have this problem, or whose devices have this problem: They surely feel worst of all.

Mr. Bell played the Hungarian tunes with directness and sensitivity. They were just of-the-people enough, just “classical” enough – an excellent synthesis. I was reminded of his folk forays with the double bassist and composer Edgar Meyer. Mr. Bell has a talent for slipping into the skin of any music – which is, after all, musicianship, or musicality.

He ended his printed program on Wednesday night with Wieniawski’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 15. Here he committed no schmaltz, or precious little of it. He employed real style, with no condescension – and he demonstrated a fair share of technique.

The adoring audience was treated to one encore, an arrangement of a Chopin nocturne. (Mr. Bell had said that he considers Wienawski “the Chopin of the violin.”) He played this piece rather as he plays the Meditation from “Thais”: purely and unsentimentally. He was a little flat toward the end, and he did not have his best final note – it did not sustain optimally.

But this hardly mattered, in a violin recital that redeemed itself.