In its introverted way, György Ligeti’s horn trio is one of the most subversive masterpieces of the last half century. It was the work that in 1982 signalled a radical change of direction in Ligeti’s music, taking him away from the European avant garde and towards a style that not only drew on the music of the past but also incorporated elements from other musical cultures.

Ligeti went on to refine many of the ideas and techniques he first explored in the trio, but it remains an extraordinary work, and one that’s not played anything like as often as it should be. The performance by violinist Pekka Kuusisto, horn player Alec Frank-Gemmill and pianist Tamara Stefanovich was easily the best thing in their recital together, agile in the tumbling scherzo, fierce in the third-movement march and achingly intense in the final lamento, with its clashes between tempered and natural tunings.

Earlier, they had played the Brahms horn trio equally adeptly but rather stiffly, and between the trios there was more Brahms – the G major Violin Sonata Op 78. But Kuusisto and Stefanovich’s self-indulgent performance seemed a perverse attempt to turn the sonata into a succession of slow movements, in which the latter’s sparing use of vibrato made a tendency to play on the sharp side of the piano’s pitch distracting. Kuusisto had been much more engaging, interspersing Eduard Tubin’s Suite on Estonian Dance Pieces with three of his own arrangements of Finnish folk songs, in which he sang, whistled and played his violin as a ukelele, as well as getting the Wigmore audience to join in on the chorus of one number – perhaps the biggest achievement of all.