The South Bank's 2005/6 International Piano Series began with a recital by the Argentinian Nelson Goerner, who played three substantial works. He opened with Janacek's From the Street IX 1905, a protest piece prompted by the death of a young apprentice called Frantisek Pavlik during a demonstration in favour of a Czech university in the predominantly German-speaking city of Brno. Its two movements are more than snapshots of a violent scene, containing anger and sadness as well as tension, all bound together by a subtle use of colour.

Technically and emotionally Goerner had its measure, deftly highlighting Janacek's melodic lines while conveying the richness of his harmony and his piano writing's alternation of intimacy with sombre grandeur.

He followed with Schumann's Humoreske, a lengthy sequence of character studies that the composer thought of as a set of variations without a theme, and whose sudden mood-swings represent his genius at its most mercurial. It brought out the best in Goerner, whose fingerwork was immaculate and whose attention to inner voices helped reveal the detail of the writing. While articulating its repeated shifts between introvert and extrovert, he also held the work together, realising a sense of momentum throughout a structure that could register as piecemeal.

The second half was Liszt's B minor Sonata, one of the grandest and most ambitious of the Romantic period. This was less successful. There were passages where Goerner was not entirely on top of the notes, and others that lacked a sense of vision or Lisztian largesse. This work needs to be a spiritual experience as well as a musical one, and that implies an overview that was lacking here. Despite some commanding playing and moments of extraordinary sensitivity, it didn't quite add up to the aspirational quest that Liszt conceived and his finest interpreters achieve.