Uchida is one of the most insightful pianists on the scene today, but until relatively recently she rarely popped up on the local performance calendar. She was originally scheduled to play a Mozart piano concerto with conductor Charles Mackerras on a programme that also included a suite from Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen and Dvorak's Symphony No 7. When Mackerras cancelled due to ill health, she agreed to conduct the CSO from the piano in two Mozart concertos, the A major Concerto K414 and the F major Concerto K459. The programme also included a Mozart chamber piece, the well-known C Minor Serenade for Winds K388, featuring eight CSO wind players.

Mozart is one of Uchida's specialities, and, in a multiyear project with the Cleveland Orchestra, she is conducting all of the composer's piano concertos from the keyboard. Daniel Barenboim, CSO music director and also a stellar pianist, regularly conducts Mozart from the keyboard at Symphony Center, and it was intriguing Thursday night to consider both pianists' approaches.

Neither apologises for the kind of plushy sound that a hefty, modern piano with its lid removed and a modern orchestra, even reduced to Thursday night's force of 30-some players, brings to Mozart. In both the amiable K414 and the more robust K459, Uchida and her small CSO contingent played with full-bodied, flowing lyricism as well as limpid clarity.

In passages not requiring piano, Uchida stood at the keyboard, not so much conducting as setting up a buoyant, rhythmic universe through which the players travelled. Her body bobbing with graceful insistence, her arms scooping the air, she communicated more through body language than any technical conducting cues. But her tempos were steady and clear, and by the second concerto, the often-dramatic F Major K459, she and the orchestra enjoyed the kind of rapport so typical of Barenboim's conducting from the piano.

There was a sinewy resilience in the F Major Concerto, especially in the final movement's fugal passages when Mozart's tightly wound syncopated theme bounced from one section of the orchestra to another. In the slow movement, Uchida's luminous piano line moved quietly against an expansive, carefully shaded but always highly charged space. Her tone was pearly, solid in the centre and cleanly cut but softly elegant at the edges. In the second movement of the A Major Concerto, Mozart's themes unfolded with grave tenderness.

The weight and seriousness of the C Minor Wind Serenade was only heightened by the eight instruments' velvety, perfectly blended tone. In a serenade that ranged from almost stern declamation to more animated song, principal clarinet Larry Combs and oboist Scott Hostetler were leaders of the extremely expressive pack.