Performing Beethoven agrees with fortepianist Levin

Levin played with a combination of deep familiarity and understanding gained from many performances on the one hand and a sense of fresh wonder and discovery on the other. And, one should add, without any sign of technical impairment. This is the combination one hopes for in the later part of a pianist’s career, but it seems to have become rare since the days of Serkin, Rubinstein, and Horowitz. (Among living pianists, Russell Sherman has it.) Levin, at 63, is still in his high summer, and one senses a rich harvest ahead.

One was a little wary after Levin’s performance last year of a Mozart concerto, also with the H&H, that was high on whimsy and short on elegance (with lots of Tom Hulce-like mugging from the keyboard). Beethoven seems to be more agreeable country. He played the Fourth Concerto straight, with fast, forward tempos, nimble passagework, a dancing lilt when called for, and a respect for the composer’s dramatic rhetoric — “Wait for it!’’ you can almost hear Beethoven yelling at the orchestra, “It won’t be what you think!’’ — while fully enjoying the showiness of it all.

There was some minor fudging in the third movement, which he suggested, in an after-concert talk, was caused by a sticking hammer on an F-sharp. The problem led him to take out the fortepiano’s action in the pause after the first movement and to tinker with the hammer. It was a gesture that underlined, in a way, the delicate, organic nature of the fortepiano (which lacks the metal frame or “harp’’ of the grand piano that supports heavier strings and a bigger soundboard).