Many Carnegie Hall listeners felt lost during the first half of the recital of pianist Mitsuko Uchida on Friday evening, which was exactly the effect for which Ms. Uchida had been striving.

The late sonatas of Franz Schubert are sophisticated temporal experiments, the composer destroying our established notion of linear time by abandoning classical balance in favor of what at first glance seems like disproportionate variations in the length of individual movements. He creates a similar architecture with phrase lengths, so that a good performance of the C minor Sonata, D958, finds the listener wandering through unfamiliar alleys accompanied by a sense of awe and delicious mystery. Ms. Uchida created such an atmosphere by employing her individual brand of charming utterance, delicate and spidery, secure and colorful. Throw in a healthy measure of rubato, and this was highly enjoyable music making.

It was this sonata that prompted critic Robert Schumann to state that he could hear “the cold wind of the grave” in its passages. It is doubtful that he would have conjured such an image from Ms. Uchida’s interpretation. Her emphasis on beauty for its own sake sacrificed some of the drama of the work, so that the spectral, particularly in the final Allegro, was an afterthought at best.

Johann Sebastian Bach obviously needs no advocacy, and Ms. Uchida clearly feels that the Hungarian György Kurtág, who will have a mini-residency in New York next season, deserves to have his music heard at Carnegie Hall. But neither of them should have been subjected to the kind of misguided skin graft that Ms. Uchida, in the best tradition of Doctor Frankenstein, attempted to perform this night. Taking small excerpts from both composers and combining them as if they were all part of the same work was — now what is the intellectual term? — oh yes, dopey. Ms. Uchida has recently exhibited some desire to conduct. Perhaps she has caught the composition itch as well, but she needs to scratch it on her own time.

It was difficult not to enjoy a whimsical piece titled “Tumble-Bunny” from Mr. Kurtág’s “Jatekok, Book III,” although the concluding bagatelle, “Play with Infinity,” had the faint air of the cliché about it. Ms. Uchida also produced a dignified “Contrapunctus No. 1” from Bach’s “Art of the Fugue.” They may have certain similarities, but, I’m sorry, they are simply not sentences from the same musical essay. Had Ms. Uchida felt the need to include the particular Bach sarabande that she intoned as part of a larger context, she should have programmed his French Suite No. 5.

The program booklet announced that she would conclude with the “original” version of Schumann’s Symphonic Études. While this may have been technically correct, it was perhaps misleading. There are as many versions of these rhythmically complex variations as there are styles for singing the American national anthem at a sporting event. Because of Schumann’s insecurities, he jettisoned material from this difficult set on a regular basis. After his demise, his friend Brahms edited the piece and restored much that had been discarded. What Ms. Uchida presented was the first edition published in Schumann’s lifetime, with a considerable amount left on the cutting-room floor.

Certainly this was a competent performance, but the conscious decision to minimize the big Romantic gesture left me unsatisfied. The études are labeled symphonic for a reason. They are, like much of the piano music of Brahms, big in thought and scope and concerned, like the symphonies of these two inseparable men, with larger-than-life emotion. Ms. Uchida traversed them cleanly but declaratively. There was more missing in this realization than just some excised movements.

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In the summer of 2001, hours before a concert at the Caramoor festival, I observed a solitary figure on the main stage, a young violinist dressed in sports clothes, playing though the Joachim cadenza of the Brahms concerto. What she was doing was not practicing (the time for that had long since passed), but rather listening, making absolutely sure that her huge tone was properly resonating in the warm but idiosyncratic acoustics of the Moorish tent. The naked sonorities were thrilling and seemed ultimately to satisfy this obviously dedicated musician, who could have just as easily taken the money and run without so much attention to detail. The violinist was Sarah Chang.

Ms. Chang’s professionalism served her well on Saturday evening, as she led a very satisfying rendition of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” with the strings of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Entering the stage with everyone else and eschewing a solo bow, Ms. Chang established herself from the beginning as just one of the gang, diving into some lovely duets with her mates in the opening section of “Spring.”

The tone is at once brilliant and burnished, and Ms. Chang employed a wide palette of colors as she traversed the red priest’s naturalistic music. Tasteful contrasts of dynamics dominated her communication strategy, the group as a whole hardly ever reaching for a double forte. Ms. Chang is a technical wizard and exudes a confidence that allows her to transcend the gymnastic demands of the fiddling and cut right to the heart of the emotion underneath. This quiet version was so much more impressive than contemporary solipsistic realizations by such showy soloists as Julia Fischer or Nigel Kennedy.

Normally, it is the febrile passages of “Spring” or “Summer” that stand out as Technicolor crowd pleasers, but Ms. Chang may have reached her acme during the more subdued and thoughtful scenes of “Winter.” Judging by the loud ovations — engendered by a very young crowd — that followed every movement, there was no need to resort to pandering or cheap tricks. The Divine Sarah simply sailed through unscathed.

Ottorino Respighi physically resembled Beethoven so closely that he was asked to portray the famous composer in a 1920s film. Although he thought of himself primarily as a man of the theater, producing several operas of note before establishing, at the very least, a cordial relationship with the Italian Fascists, Respighi is known today virtually exclusively for his tone poetry. Joined by their wind and brass players, Orpheus began their Carnegie program with a breezy realization of “Gli Uccelli” (“The Birds”). Conductorless as always, the group is experimenting with a system of rotating core musicians who lead each performance. Their avian explorations were notable for their bright blended sound, crispness of attack, and variety of instrumental color. At least in this piece, Mr. Respighi also resembled Beethoven as a mimic of nature’s very first musical forays.

Orpheus has committed to the fostering of new music and so presented the world premiere of three movements of “Synaxis” from the pen of the locally ubiquitous Charles Wuorinen. Although this music seemed charmless and arbitrary, with not even much of a harmonic underpinning to interest the ear, there was little doubt that it was well-played and had been rehearsed assiduously. Soloists Robert Ingliss, oboe, Alan Kay, clarinet, and Stewart Rose, horn, performed yeoman service in dubious cause.