We don't get many Liszt songs in vocal recitals, even though they form a central part of the composer's output. They're hard to place, for one thing - with their mix of German seriousness and Italianate lyricism - and both the formal and harmonic ideas at work can be idiosyncratic.

The most rewarding aspect of Tuesday's recital by the Italian baritone Luca Pisaroni - which was otherwise an awkward and unsuccessful affair - was his decision to devote the entire second half of the program to music by Liszt. Some of it was familiar repertoire, but the chance to hear a full swath of it was yet another reminder of how far we still have to go in integrating this unusual artist into our concert life.

In a number of Liszt's songs on poems by Heine and Goethe, the contrast to better-known settings by Schubert or Schumann was striking - where those composers opt for concision and symmetry, Liszt takes every opportunity for rhetorical fervor. And the more overtly dramatic pieces on the program, including three songs from "William Tell" and "The Three Gypsies," hint at the composer's theatrical impulse.

Unfortunately, Pisaroni's advocacy for this music didn't go far enough beyond the programming stage. Appearing alongside pianist Wolfram Rieger in the Nourse Theater, under the auspices of San Francisco Performances, Pisaroni delivered an evening dominated by technical lapses and ungainly interpretive choices.

Intonation was a recurrent problem, with many notes sounding flat and sustained phrases wobbling precariously around their intended pitch. Pisaroni's vocal quality could be winningly robust at certain key junctures, but turned reedy and wispy in more intimate passages. The easy suavity he displayed in his 2010 San Francisco Opera debut as Mozart's Figaro was rarely in evidence.

The first half of the program featured music by Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart's contemporary Johann Friedrich Reichardt - settings of Petrarchan sonnets that must surely be more interesting than they sounded on Tuesday. Pisaroni's most effective singing came in the encore, Liszt's gorgeously sentimental "O Lieb."
