Sunday night’s concert in Zankel Hall – the brown-hued basement of Carnegie – had a theme, or driving concept: tonality and its development. But you didn’t have to bow to musicology; you simply could have enjoyed the pieces presented to you. That, after all, is a concert.

This was one of Richard Goode’s series, called “Perspectives,” or “Richard Goode: Among Friends.” (Carnegie Hall has used both designations.) The pianist began the evening all by his lonesome, playing three preludes and fugues from Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.” Two of them were from Book II. Interestingly, we seldom hear pieces from this book in performance – Book I is favored.

Mr. Goode began with the Prelude and Fugue in A minor from Book II. The prelude was relaxed, lapidary, inevitable, as Mr. Goode let the music speak for itself. The fugue was slightly furious, and a bit rushed – but still completely clear.

The pianist next turned to the Prelude and Fugue in F major, also from Book II. The prelude was a limpid brook; the fugue had the right spring in its step – jaunty.

And then? The beloved Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor, from Book I. The prelude was a disappointment: Mr. Goode warped the rhythm of this little beauty, playing it like a Chopin nocturne (although he might have been a little loose even for a nocturne). More straightforwardness would have helped him immeasurably. As for the fugue, it was appropriately spooky, but it was also over-pedaled. Just a tad.

Criticisms aside, it was wonderful to hear these preludes and fugues – and wonderful to hear just a few of them. Many pianists, and harpsichordists, think you have to play a complete book, or no preludes and fugues at all.

And here is a footnote about Mr. Goode: He has developed the habit of singing and groaning, a la Glenn Gould. (Maybe he has long had this habit, but I hadn’t noticed.) I noticed, a couple of weeks ago, that Peter Serkin – another pianist – is doing the same thing. This is not terribly attractive, not cool, and is a sign of indiscipline. Sure, Gould did it – but he was crazy.

After the Bach, we had choral pieces by Carlo Gesualdo, the Neapolitan prince who lived at the turn of the 17th century. These pieces were sung by Pomerium, a group founded in 1972 by Alexander Blachly, its director, who led them on Sunday night. The group consisted of 15 singers, mainly men; for some Gesualdo pieces, they scaled down to five.

They sang seven pieces, some of them sacred, some of them secular; some of them in Latin, some of them in the vernacular. And Pomerium sang them correctly and intelligently. They also sang them sparely and bleakly. Would it have been an affront to authenticity to sing a little beautifully? Would they have broken some compact with the past? Would they have been subject to arrest by the period police?

I think we can all agree that it’s always right to be musical (whatever that means to each of us).

Moreover, the seven pieces constituted rather a lot of Gesualdo. At one point, the lady behind me said to her companion, “Oh, my God, we’ve only had three?” I knew what she meant.

To begin the second half of the program, Mr. Goode played Berg’s Sonata, Op.1,and he played it with tremendous understanding, and tremendous beauty. You will never hear a more beautiful rendering of this work – it was, in fact, gorgeous, and, to a degree, revelatory. Berg would have rejoiced in Mr. Goode’s sensitivity.

And to close the program was Schonberg’s song cycle “Das Buch der hangenden Garten” (“The Book of the Hanging Gardens”), Op. 15. Here Schonberg uses texts of the poet Stefan George, same as he had in his pivotal Quartet No. 2 (“I feel the air of different planets”).

Mr. Goode took as his singing partner his longtime collaborator Dawn Upshaw, the soprano. She has had a particularly good season – I think, for example, of the Lukas Foss work she sang with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (in Carnegie Hall). She was in good shape Sunday night, singing those Schonberg songs expressively and intimately. She produced her flying high notes, with all that air rushing through them (no matter from what planet).

And Mr. Goode played with his expected intelligence and taste. This is, indeed, one of the outstanding musical collaborations, Goode & Upshaw, or Upshaw & Goode, to give the soprano her due. Mr. Goode is merely the pianist!