Mitsuko Uchida, Barbican, London

Back when Mitsuko Uchida first performed the complete Mozart piano sonatas, received opinion was that they formed an uneven body of work. Nearly 25 years on, their stock has risen, but there are still only a handful of pianists who could match Uchida and reliably fill the Barbican for an all-Mozart recital.

Perhaps this has something to do with our cosy image of an extraordinary composer doodling happily at the piano, with little of Beethoven's soul-searching or Schubert's melancholy. Uchida's programme turned that image on its head, showing us a composer exploring turbulent emotions and veering towards a surprising modernity.

Holding the audience rapt from the start, she began with the Fantasy K475, and continued straight into the sonata K457, building up a swathe of dark, brooding C minor. The Fantasy emerged so much like an improvisation that it seemed impossible to imagine the music coming out quite that way ever again. The sonata was spurred into life by a seizure of impatience; the cracking pace at which Uchida took its outer movements led to some tense playing, so that the smiling slow movement came as a respite from what seemed, from composer and pianist alike, to be unusual anger. Passion spent, the Adagio in B minor followed, its pulsing sadness punctuated by three recurring chords that sounded like a signal to change partners for another round of the same, slow dance.

The F major K533 and D major K576 sonatas brought a more familiar sense of Mozartian playfulness. And yet there were still surprises. Though she signed off with a familiar C major movement from K545, Uchida's first encore was a minute-long burst of Schoenberg. A million musical miles away from the Mozart we know and love, it didn't sound remotely out of place.