Hahn, the long-distance violinist

Violinist Hilary Hahn is pushing herself hard on tour these days, and she asks a lot from her listeners as well. Or so it seemed Friday night at Occidental College’s Thorne Hall, where Hahn and her formidable collaborator (“accompanist” is absolutely the wrong word here), pianist Valentina Lisitsa, played a long, arduous program of five sonatas. The evening lasted 2 3/4 hours, with two intermissions -- the first perhaps unintentional, but when the house lights go up, audiences take a break.

Rather than start with a predictable 18th century piece, Hahn turned tradition on its head by leading with the Franck sonata -- which most often turns up at the end of a program -- and after the first intermission, following with a Mozart sonata, the K. 378 in B flat.

I cannot say whether the unorthodox placement of the Franck had something to do with it, but Hahn’s performance, for all of its near-perfect technical finish and seamless legato phrasing, was oddly unmoving and monochromatic, hardly the emotional Romantic vehicle we usually get when violinists are all fired up near the end of an evening.

Hahn’s playing showed more character in the Mozart, flying along at headlong tempos while taking every repeat in the score. After asserting herself strongly in the Franck, Lisitsa also made sure in the Mozart that her melodic lines in the right hand were just as important as Hahn’s contributions.

Some esoterica, relatively speaking, followed in the form of Ysaye’s tricky, multiple-stop-loaded Sonata No. 5 for solo violin, which Hahn brought to a brilliantly polished close in the final dance, everything dead-on in tune. After Intermission 2, with Lisitsa back at the keyboard, came Ives’ Sonata No. 3, which contains some of the New England maverick’s experiments in reverse development. In the finale, we don’t hear the actual hymn tune upon which the movement is built until the very end. It’s the journey itself that’s supposed to be the point, though Ives’ route in this case is not very interesting.

By the time the last heavyweight program anchor, Brahms’ Sonata No. 2, turned up, the chemistry between Hahn and Lisitsa had altered somewhat. Lisitsa seemed more relaxed and less forward, and Hahn caught the fervor of Brahms’ rhetoric to a much greater degree than she had in the Franck.

The pair might have been excused for not offering an encore -- they had played plenty already -- but back they came with the Heifetz transcription of the March from Prokofiev’s “The Love for Three Oranges,” performed with subtlety and lightness.