A flash of scarlet tie and scarlet pocket handkerchief; a silence you could slice; one hand hovering over the keyboard; then both hands meeting, gently singing out Bach's Sheep may safely graze like a lullaby from eternity.

Both hands, yes. For this was the 80-year-old Leon Fleisher, returning from 40 years of semi-exile - years in which only one hand played the piano. Now, with the neurological affliction treated, all ten fingers came to the Wigmore Hall. And a capacity audience of keyboard veterans, young prodigies and a long-queueing public sat (or stood) in silence to hear Egon Petri's gentle arrangement of the Bach classic.

Fleisher began Bach's Capriccio in B flat, “on the departure of his most beloved brother”, with the same disarming nonchalance, each note simply and sweetly voiced so that each harmonic sidestep was relished all the more. In the third movement's lament of a passacaglia, Fleisher's balancing of voices between the hands revealed a sense of listening as well as speaking - and the super-strong left hand was joined by a triumphant right in the posthorn finale.

Still more Bach and the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue seemed written to test every note, half-note, finger and thumb. Fleisher made of it a tough intellectual and emotional argument, bringing oratory to the impassioned recitative, and a journey from wonder to affirmation and resolution in the Fugue. Brahms's arrangement for left hand only of Bach's Chaconne in D minor (originally for solo violin) was a moving incarnation of musical and physical adversity overcome.

After the interval the ear was calmed by soundscapes from Debussy and Albeniz: three Preludes and two Impressions from Iberia. Then a Chopin Mazurka and Nocturne of rich and strange malleability, in which time and barlines seemed to dissolve - and a Scherzo No 3 in C sharp minor in which Fleisher's visionary powers overcame any physical obstacle. A single, childlike encore from Ravel's Mother Goose, and the great man disappeared once again into the darkness.

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