Mitsuko Uchida is a pianist made to order for Carnegie Hall's 'Perspectives' Series, or perhaps more accurately, 'Perspectives' seems made to order for her. The series, now five years old, invites artists on a one or two-year basis to assemble a number of programmes, with colleagues, making some particular musical point or focusing on an area of special interest. Uchida's special interest - or at least one of them - is long established: she has been playing programs designed around works of both Viennese 'schools' for many years, and a series of New York recitals some seasons back pairing Schubert and Schoenberg remains a vivid memory to this day.

She is now in the second year of her Carnegie project (Emanuel Ax, Dawn Upshaw, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Brazilian composer Caetano Veloso are also in the first or second stages of theirs), and she is presenting four programs in quick succession this month, three in Zankel Hall, the last in Carnegie's main hall. We have heard the first two; the third, 21 November, brings together a chamber orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen's direction (Webern, Schumann, Berg), the fourth is Uchida's all-Beethoven solo recital on 24 November. The first two evenings bode well for what is to come.

Even as director of her own series, Uchida is not one to hog the stage. On both 15 and 17 November she gave the Brentano String Quartet players a healthy share of time on their own; and on the 17th she partnered tenor Ian Bostridge in an absorbing and pianistically dazzling Schöne Müllerin.

For the opening concert, the Brentano gave its second violin a holiday and turned its attention to Schoenberg's String Trio Op 45 (1946) and Mozart's Trio for violin, viola, and cello K 563. Uchida occupied the centre of the programme with Schubert's Moments musicaux. The Brentano threesome proved positively scintillant in the Schoenberg, sizzling with electrical precision, luminous in slow sections, light as butterflies in negotiating Schoenberg's extremely meticulous scoring. Tuneful moments emerged clearly, colours came forth. Twelve-tone composition has seldom been more palatable. A similar refinement was highly complimentary to the Mozart, polished and satiny in the opening Allegro, nicely punchy and biting in the Minuet. The three instruments blended beautifully, all the while firmly anchored by the group's vibrant cellist, Nina Lee.

Uchida brings a sense of intense inwardness to much of what she plays, and so it was with the six Moments musicaux, in which each phrase seemed to unfold according to its own internal propulsion. There was a dreamlike quality in the Andantino No 2, very free but cohesive in its middle section; a sharp but never brittle definition in the staccato Allegro moderato No 3; plenty of thrust in Allegro vivace No 5. In the lengthy final Allegretto, phrase melted into phrase with a kind of hymnal serenity. Uchida's concentration, I think, was matched by all of us listening.

The Brentano came back in full force on 17 November for Berg's Lyric Suite, beginning the 'giovale' opening with flickering delicacy, and gliding into the 'amoroso' movement's languorous phase without ever sagging or going limp. The pizzicato scamper of the 'Trio Estatico' went like lightning, the deep unease of the 'Tenebroso' was almost menacing. The turmoil of the final 'Largo desolato' never descended into roughness, and the second violin's song carried affectingly before the work faded to its desolate close on the viola alone. Again, the Brentano made clear that expressive power simply overrides any constrictions in the 12-tone method.

Bostridge's tenor is light, pure, and possibly best suited for small halls - I first heard him in the intimate surroundings of the Frick Collection's concert room, where every note carried. At the start of Schubert's Schöne Müllerin in Zankel on Monday some of the lower range got lost, but Bostridge seemed to become aware of that and by the second song began to project more forcefully, without sign of strain.

He is wonderfully sensitive to Wilhelm Müller's text, and his vocal agility allowed light and shadow to play throughout the cycle. The extrovert character of Am Feierabend, as the lover wishes he were stronger so as to catch the maiden's attention, came as naturally as the muted inwardness of Der Neugierige; the repeated, ringing declaration Dein is mein Herz was immediately offset in the following Morgengruss, in which Bostridge lingered tenderly but not too long over the question, 'Has night been good to you...' The descent into melancholy at Die liebe Farbe gave way to snarling intensity in Trockne Blumen, and the pensive Des Baches Wiegenlied brought an inescapable sense of finality.

As for Bostridge's keyboard partner, she was with him at the core of every song, singing the words silently to herself, adding an immeasurable dimension to the music. In 'Halt!' the intensity of those little arpeggio eruptions was almost startling, the propulsive anger of Der Jäger was biting, the sadness of Die böse Farbe went to the heart. Uchida's own 'perspectives', obviously, remain deep and wide-ranging.