As research for another concert, I recently pulled all of my vinyl recordings of “Quartet for the End of Time” from their shelves and was struck by the photos of one of the groups of performers. Tashi released their version of the Messiaen masterpiece in 1976, and their marketing campaign of the time, inspired by the much more lucrative rock music arena, featured a psychedelic foldout album with no less than two San Francisco-style portraits (I also have a recording from the same era, featuring excerpts from the Utah Symphony, titled “Mahler Is Heavy”).

What struck me about the dated images is that only one of the four participants seems comfortable in his counterculture outfit. Fred Sherry and Ida Kavafian appear to be normal, straight-arrow grad students. Richard Stoltzman may be dressed in Tibetan robes, but his general appearance still reeks of conformity. Only the driving force behind the project, pianist Peter Serkin, can honestly boast of the trappings of rebellion; his hirsuteness gives new meaning to the term “longhair music.” Not surprisingly, with the benefit of historical perspective, it appears to be Mr. Serkin who has traveled the most individual of paths.

His thoroughbred lineage is exceptionally impressive. Grandfather Adolf Busch was one of the greatest of intellectual musicians in the first half of the previous century, and the first major non-Jewish musician to publicly leave and denounce Hitler’s Germany. Mr. Serkin’s great uncles were the conductor Fritz Busch, the guiding hand of Glyndebourne, and cellist Hermann Busch, a founding member of both the famed Busch Trio and Quartet. Mr. Serkin’s father was, of course, the eminent pianist and scholar Rudolf Serkin. I had the pleasure of hearing Serkin senior perform live; I felt that this was as close as I would ever get to hearing how the composer had originally conceived of the work, so confident and detailed was his approach to music-making.

But Peter has always been a bit of a puzzle. Focus seems to be a problem. Once, at Tanglewood, he forgot his part in the Brahms First Concerto, but played on anyway, making it up as he went along. Seiji came over to him while still conducting, and they discussed the situation, but Mr. Serkin soon waived him off: Unfortunately his recall did not serve him well, and we were all treated to a new composition created *in medias res*. He can be as accurate as a laser beam, however, especially in concerts of Schonberg and Messiaen, and his championing of neglected genius Stephan Wolpe is extremely praiseworthy.

On Sunday afternoon, performing a free concert at Town Hall, Mr. Serkin designed an interesting program, but presented it uninterestingly. Except for a fragment of Oliver Knussen, the most contemporary composer on this bill of fare was Mozart. Mr. Serkin offered a dramatic reading of the Allegro maestoso from the Sonata in A Minor, K 310, but the playing was both sloppy and choppy, exhibiting a rhythmic inconsistency that was positively maddening. Strict meter ought to be a breeze for this artist, but I had no sense that he was experimenting with mini-rubato; rather, he just appeared to be not listening intently to his own playing. I was, however.

The same type of dreamy inattention infected the middle movement, but Mr. Serkin did rally to perform a very refreshing Presto, taken at a somewhat relaxed tempo. After so much vapid self-aggrandizement from many of his colleagues, who seem determined to show off how fast they can play, Mr. Serkin reminded me of his father in this section, letting the music breathe and stand on its own merits.

Most of the rest of the afternoon was devoted to pre-Bach compositions of short length, perhaps designed to elicit as much applause as possible from the decidedly less sophisticated audience. Hoist with his own petard, however, Mr. Serkin had to deal with the most enthusiastic of interruptions throughout this recital, from applause after movements to clapping before a piece had even concluded. There was even a shout from the balcony, which I like to think consisted of the phrase “love you,” although those around me heard an expletive instead. This was a tough crowd.

After Desprez, Bull, Dowland, and Byrd, old J.S. Bach sounded almost modern. Mr. Serkin has been exploring this contextual trick for decades now, making Beethoven appear the most revolutionary composer on an otherwise 20th-century program. But these realizations at Town Hall were not strong advocacy for the Baroque. The spiritual nature of the chorale BWV 691 was simply absent, the elan vital of the “Concerto in the Italian Style” apparently taking Sunday off.

This entire recital was workaday at best, wrongheaded at worst. The most frustrating part of the story is that Peter Serkin can do so much better.