Those horizons lighted Sunday's Kimmel Center recital by Andre Watts, who balanced Schubert and Liszt in a thoughtful illustration of the directions music took as the futurists and the multivoiced piano rolled over earlier musical, mechanical and sonic limitations. The pianist has spent much of his 40-year career exploring Liszt's role in shaping the music we hear. He has the equipment, and the curiosity, to question onstage how a hesitation or a slight quickening might affect the long idea. How long the pause? How harsh the bass? He seemed to be making those decisions moment to moment in music he has lived with for so long.

It is Liszt the mystic who earned Watts' greater empathy; Schubert the innovator and singer seemed a bit stiff, a little forced, as if Watts found the music not quite rich enough, or wanting in emotion.

He shaped the program to let shorter works by each composer provide context for Liszt's Sonata in B minor and Schubert's "Wanderer" Fantasie. Each of those is a landmark in the evolution of music after Beethoven. Where Schubert followed melody to find new expressive forms, Liszt stretched harmonic possibilities to create theatrical and profound new directions.

In the Liszt sonata, Watts was immersed in the mystery, the wonder of discovery, and the marvel of coherence. The first sounds return at the end; the motifs and gestures that emerged were wonderfully retrieved and colored later on. As a portrait of the composer, it was a fulfilling and brilliant achievement.

By preceding the sonata with Un Sospiro and following it with three shadowy pieces - Nuages gris, Schlaflos, Frage und Antwort, and En reve - Watts etched a vibrant tableau of the mystic basis of Liszt's writing. By exploiting the vast dynamic range, the demonic tumults, and the clear single notes, Watts multiplied contrasts and powerful structural effects.

Watts formed a kind of sonata from three of Schubert's Moments Musicaux, then prepared the ground for the Fantasie With Klavierstuecke No. 2, a work that ends as mysteriously as any of Liszt's.

The "Wanderer" emerged as a showpiece. Watts found so many ways to let the theme shine through the vigorous writing. Here was playing based on admiration. The Liszt was based on passion.