We have known at least since her residency with the Berliner Philharmoniker in the 2008/09 season just what a sensitive chamber music musician Mitsuko Uchida is. At that time, she performed together with members of the orchestra as well as with students from the Orchestra Academy. In her chamber concert this year, she performs with 1st concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto, 1st principal cellist Ludwig Quandt and principal clarinetist Wenzel Fuchs. In addition to Olivier Messiaen’s harrowing Quatuor pour la fin du temps, which was composed and premiered in a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, the programme includes the Adagio from Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto, first performed in 1927, in a version for trio from Berg’s own pen, and a trio movement for violin, cello and piano by Franz Schubert. This piece, which the composer probably wrote for an ultimately unfinished cycle of works for trio, was issued after Schubert’s death by the Viennese publisher Diabelli with the title Nocturne. An incredibly clever and pioneering marketing strategy! How better to sell this musical foundling than to associate it with moonlight, the sound of crickets and the scent of blossoms. Schubert’s strangely otherworldly music effortlessly does justice to all these interpretations – and yet denies all attempts to be understood in terms of visual comparisons. Good music simply cannot be measured by just how well it can be sold …

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