Let’s get this out of the way: Lang Lang is a technical wizard. Considering how many notes he struck on Wednesday evening at Carnegie Hall, his degree of precision was astounding.

Mr. Lang (or is it Mr. Lang?) is not yet a favorite of critics, but audiences love him. He brings to live performance an armamentarium of gestures that are perceived either as charming or distracting. For our purposes, let’s concentrate on his musicality instead.

Earlier this month, another young Chinese phenom,Yundi Li, presented a recital at Carnegie Hall.On Wednesday evening,Mr.Lang offered a remarkably similar program, but did so much more engagingly. He opened with the same Mozart sonata, the C major K. 330, as did Mr. Li.

Mr. Lang impressed me by handling the Andante cantabile as if it were a chorale. This was spiritual music-making in an unexpected setting. But his alacrity in the final movement turned the music into pudding, and he made a few blatant mistakes. They were virtually the only stumbles of the entire night.

Where Mr. Li featured Robert Schumann’s “Carnaval,” Mr. Lang chose a similar suite of sketches by Schumann titled “Kinderszenen” (“Scenes of Childhood”), written three years later in 1838. He opted for the Horowitz interpretation of the famous “Traumerei,” a much slower realization than the original score would indicate. However, he more than made up for this lovely dalliance with amazingly dexterous playing in other scenes at a brisk tempo.

Mr. Li performed the Liszt Sonata in B minor, and Mr. Lang traversed the Chopin sonata in the same key. These pieces are quite similar musically. The Chopin is the “not the funeral march” sonata,and most pianists intone it as an example of high drama. Mr. Lang hears it quite differently. For him, it is deeply contemplative, and his traversal was revelatory.

He caught my ear from the first measures.These are normally rendered as a huge cascade, but in Mr. Lang’s hands, the opening was gentle rather than explosive. His sensitive playing of the remainder of the work was thus intelligible and involving, if undeniably idiosyncratic.

Next came two preludes by Rachmaninoff, one very familiar (the G minor, Op. 23 No. 5) and one not so wellloved (the B-flat major from the same set). The excitement of the latter was lost in an orgy of sustaining pedal, which reminded me that for all his maturation, Mr. Lang is still a child hungry for attention.

The G minor, however, was terrific, as Mr. Lang provided a heightened sense of drama. I could even envision the composer himself performing it, as he did in the early days of the 20th century at Carnegie Hall. This image was somewhat easy for me to conjure, as I often kept my eyes wide shut during this performance. For maximum appreciation of Lang Lang, it helps to keep the visuals to a minimum.

Putting Liszt on the program might have been perceived as a nod to the strictly virtuosic, but the choice of the “Petrarch Sonnet No. 104” from “Annees de pelerinage” actually allowed Mr. Lang to further explore his softer side. Liszt is a frustratingly unclassifi able composer – part deep thinker, part envelope pusher, part circus performer. Mr. Lang’s ruminative realization of the “Petrarch” was blissfully convoluted, impressively and unhurriedly phrased, and beautifully filled with subtle internal dynamic changes. I’d guess that few in the crowd expected this type of playing from Mr. Lang.

Horowitz appeared once again as the transcriptionist of the final work on the program, Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.” Mr. Lang’s performance, however, reminded me instead of another beloved pianist from the same era.This was the Chico Marx version of the piece, complete with light-fingered arpeggiated passages and a rousing portion of good humor.

Mr. Lang is especially adept at making his audience laugh, and he tailored this rendition for maximum comic effect. Even leaving his kinesis aside, he had that crowd in the palm of his big hand. And they responded with one final paroxysm of applause.I half expected Mr. Lang to break into a medley of college football songs.

Just like Mr. Li, Mr. Lang ended his evening by selling his CDs in the lobby. He may have to, in order to make any money: There were so many reporters in that audience that little room was left for paying customers.