By Nancy Plum

Over the past decades, Princeton University Concerts has developed enduring relationships with performers worldwide, always expanding the PUC artist family. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra has long been one of these partners, returning to Princeton several times to showcase the excellence of its international roster. Founded in 1997 as an artistic “global collective,” the Orchestra is comprised of musicians from 25 countries who come together for each tour or project, exploring instrumental dialogue and the “sound of listening” though a wide range of repertoire.

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra revisited Richardson Auditorium last Thursday night under the leadership of pianist/conductor Mitsuko Uchida, who is particularly well known for her interpretation of the works of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Uchida’s performances of the piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are considered a gold standard, and it was two of these concertos which she and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra brought to the Princeton stage.

Mozart composed more than 25 concertos for piano and orchestra, many of which were vehicles for his own performance as soloist. Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat Major, dating from 1784, was one of six written that year alone, part of a constant demand for new works from the prodigious composer. These works may have originally involved a great deal of improvisation from the soloist, and as pianist, Uchida highlighted the imaginative aspects of the music and its inherent virtuosity.

Conducting from the keyboard, Uchida led with small but effective gestures in the opening movement, eliciting a refined sound with a Viennese lilt. She directs with a great deal of joy, and her hands transitioned effortlessly from conductor to pianist, with crisp left-hand octaves and right-hand passages that never stopped. A dark second movement was marked by expressive solos from flutist Chiara Tonelli and oboist Mizuho Yoshii. Oboes and solo bassoonist Mathis Stier played graceful thirds while Uchida built drama well from the keyboard. As soloist, Uchida held the audience in suspense throughout the closing “Allegro,” playing delicate scales and figures accompanied by precise winds. Her final cadenza, displaying cascading scales, closed the Concerto with stylish elegance.

A work by early 20th-century Czech composer Leoš Janácek might seem to have little connection to Mozart, but Janácek long acknowledged the Viennese composer’s influence on his music, also writing extensively on Mozart compositional theory. Janácek described his 1924 Mládí for wind sextet as “a kind of memory of youth” recalling his childhood years in the Moravian region of Brno. Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and bass clarinet, this piece reflects on the composer’s past in a four-movement suite, beginning with an oboe theme paying tribute to “youth, golden youth.”

The six Mahler Chamber Orchestra players — flutist Tonelli, oboist Yoshii, clarinetist Vicente Alberola, bassoonist Stier, hornist José Vicente Castelló, and bass clarinetist Renaud Guy-Rousseau — began Janácek’s work cleanly and energetically, bringing out the quirkiness of the opening “Allegro.” Stier and Guy-Rousseau set a pensive tone for the second movement, with a light instrumental color provided by flutist Tonelli. Yoshii played a subsequent pastoral melody as if she had all the time in the world, contrasted by the charm of Tonelli’s piccolo lines and a duet between Yoshii and clarinetist Alberola. Janácek’s tribute to youth alternated between calm and swirling passages to bring the piece to an animated close.

Uchida returned to the keyboard for another work ingrained in her repertory. Mozart’s 1785 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major is most known for its second movement “Elvira Madigan” theme, used in film and television. Uchida led the Orchestra through an opening conversation between piano and ensemble, leaning into the 18th-century harmonic suspensions and creating dynamic contrasts by using pairs of strings at a time, rather than the whole section. The orchestral palette of this Concerto was colored by the valveless natural trumpets, played by Christopher Dicken and Florian Kirner.

The familiar “Elvira Madigan” music was presented delicately by the strings at first, and languidly by Uchida’s piano solo, complemented by an almost imperceptible oboe melody. The final movement was marked by particularly supple playing from all, conveying a humorous character later seen in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. In the closing cadenza, Uchida easily captured the virtuosity and versatility that Mozart would have shown in his own performance, ending the Concerto with grace and joy. Uchida took one more turn at delighting the listeners before the end of the evening with a sensitive and lyrical encore of Bach.

Princeton University Concerts has announced its 2025-26 season, which will feature a wide range of performances from internationally renowned artists and ensembles. Information can be found at concerts.princeton.edu.