Pianist Piers Lane came with a mission, a theme to pursue; navigating the road of inspiration that led to Schumann's Fantasie Opus 17. The journey was spellbinding.
We started with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Lane had alerted us to the influence of Don Giovanni and the first movement seemed to emerge
from the shadows of the Commendatore's tomb, shivering from major to minor with chords suspended in a the calm of another world. In the stormy Finale, which gave the tonally challenged Town Hall Steinway its first test of the evening, casual closing themes became grim buffa.
Liszt's transcription of the Allegretto from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was liberated from its pages, its major sections more Schumannesque than ever.
After this came Schumann's own Etudes on the Beethoven theme. Ambitious and not always successful, these revealed a composer taken over by Beethoven's obsessional example.
Lane delivered rippling scales, chromatic curlicues and gossamer textures with equal artistry.
"Accept, then, these songs", was the opening line of the Beethoven Lied which we next heard through Liszt's arrangement. This was a marvel of the transcriber's art, and Lane caught every inflection down to the Schubertian premonitions of its final pages.
After interval, a rippling account of Schubert's G flat Impromptu was the last stop before our final port of call.
Schumann's Fantasie is a work of unsettling genius, from the clustering harmonies of the opening outburst to a march that looks forward to Elgar, Mussorgsky and Prokofiev.
Lane penetrated this elusive piece to its very core. The many shifts of the first movement distributed fancy and passion in equal parts and, although there were a few smudges in the second, its monumental main theme was rugged and sonorous, with Schumann's devious canons all accounted for.
Only in the finely moulded Lento, stretched to just over 13 minutes, was there any hint of self-indulgence.
Three encores set off with Rachmaninov's jaunty G minor Prelude and farewelled us with the same Chopin waltz that Lane offered on his last visit.
In between, Percy Grainger's rapturous "Ramble" on Rosenkavalier, with its swoops and sighs, suggested that Schumann need not have been the end of this journey.
