In 2001, after Lincoln Center’s season opening was obliterated by the events of September 11, the Philharmonia Orchestra of London rearranged its schedule and mounted its Rachmaninoff series the following January. For the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the soloist was Stephen Hough.

Mr. Hough sailed along brilliantly, reveling in the beauties of newly revealed lyricism. As the audience anticipated a glorious 18th variation, Mr. Hough chose this one moment to flub his notes (his worst nightmare come to life), misplaying that most famous of Rachmaninoff melodies and evoking many winces in the crowd.

Monday evening provided an opportunity to erase this unpleasant memory as Mr. Hough offered a focused recital at Alice Tully Hall.

This year Mozart is on Mr. Hough’s mind. Every piece but one in this recital was at least partially composed by the boy genius. The pianist began with an extraordinary clean account of the Fantasia in C minor, K. 475. Every note was hit in its exact center, and there were clear definitions and lines of demarcation between passages. His style can be described as elegant, refined, limpid. Some of the drama of this emphatically minor key work, however, was lost to politesse. Technically, Mr. Hough is superb, but poetically he is a bit reserved.

Which made his Fantasie in C major by Robert Schumann suspect. Again, the lines were clean, the dynamic control impressive. But there was no big gesture, no heart-on-sleeve emotion, nothing approaching what the composer himself described as ueberfluss — overflowing cascades of feeling. The work is much longer than the Mozart pieces on the program — about 30 minutes — and I noticed patrons catching 40 winks here and there.

After intermission, Mr. Hough dazzled with the strongest performance of the night, a delicate yet remarkably nimble reading of the Sonata in B-flat major, K. 333. Here this wizard demonstrated his light but powerful touch, and sped along at a brisk tempo, carrying the listener along from first note to last.

Once, at a Salzburg Festival, Mr. Hough was asked to program something contemporary to include in his otherwise all-Mozart bill. Finding nothing suitable, he composed his own triptych, “Three Mozart Transformations” (after Poulenc), which he again performed Monday evening. These were great fun, and pleased both audience and pianist. The first is an insouciant arrangement of the first number in the Koechel catalogue, a minuet so childlike it does not even include chords. In Mr. Hough’s version, the tune is wittily transformed into a boulevardier’s song.

Second came the Klavierstuecke K. 33, another slice of juvenilia that winds down like an expiring musical clock in the highest register of the keyboard. This devolution was laugh-outloud funny, and the crowd responded in kind.

Finally, a more serious piece: the Sehnsucht nach dem Fruehling, K. 596 (my rough translation is,”The Feelings Evoked by the Memory of Spring.”) This is a lovely and poignant tune that ended the set on a humanistic note.

Before the age of recorded music, composers and performers needed to familiarize their audiences with major works. Franz Liszt was the champion of this type of transcription, and Mr. Hough ended his recital with the Ferruccio Busoni arrangement of the Liszt realization of the Fantasia on two themes from “The Marriage of Figaro.” The two themes, both associated with the character Cherubino, are “voi che sapete” and the mock marche militaire Mozart uses to usher out the lad to a new career in the army, which is often accompanied by Susanna hoisting a broom over her shoulder as a rifle.

These Lisztian virtuosic pieces had their place in the 19th century, but, quite frankly, bore me to tears in the 21st. Based less on Mozart and more on cheap effects, the work’s only positive element is that it separates the men from the boys. One must be quite dexterous to survive this type of horseplay. It really wasn’t necessary, however, for Mr. Hough to end with this finger breaker. His excellence was already proved.