As an organizing principle, the 2005 Mostly Mozart Festival presented concerts thematically built on Mozart’s travels to various European capitals. The Juilliard Orchestra’s concert Monday evening at Alice Tully Hall featured exactly the same kind of program. The two cities featured were Prague and Paris.

Monday evening Director of Conducting Studies James DePreist was at the helm, which promised uniformly excellent results. Also conductor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and a laureate conductor in Oregon (among many other posts), Mr. DePreist has a splendid ability to bring out the best in young musicians. He began with a rousing version of Hector Berlioz’s Le corsaire ouverture. Most assume this swashbuckling work is named after the Byron poem — what with Berlioz choosing to set Harold in Italy as well — but it is inspired by an American work, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover (Le corsaire rouge). I was immediately stuck by the plush sound of the Juilliard strings. After all, these people only play together for a few academic months and yet their overall sonority is opulent. Even as new personnel take over each year, this high quality of ensemble sound sets this orchestra favorably apart from the professionals in town.

Next the musicians presented a stately yet nimble account of the “Prague” Symphony. Mr. DePreist exhibited strong discipline in this realization, and never allowed his charges to overdramatize phrases or unduly emphasize dynamic changes. This was a Classical approach with a capital “c.”

As a companion piece, Mr. DePreist painstakingly engineered a historically correct rendition of the concert aria Ch’io mi scordi di te? … Non temur, amato bene, K. 505, written at the same time as the aforementioned symphony. This opera highlight — Mozart used the text before as an alternate aria for “Idomeneo” — with no opera attached to it has been heard quite often in this birthday year, but never in its original form as it was presented here. Mozart created this dramatic scene for Nancy Storace, an Irish-Italian singer who was on the Italian opera team at Vienna’s Burgtheater. Mozart wished to be an active participant in the work’s premiere and so composed a piano obbligato for Ms. Storace.

It was this version that we heard at Alice Tully. With the moving of the custom ramp and platform for Mr. De-Preist’s wheelchair, the evacuation of the orchestra, the moving of the piano onto the stage, the realignment of the chairs, and the re-entry of the musicians, the set-up for this piece took approximately twice as long as its realization. But that is the sort of freedom afforded to a conservatory concert that would never fly at a professional one.

Master’s degree recipient Isabel Leonard has a rather light but pleasing mezzo-soprano that seemed a bit thin for such a powerful work, but her ability to stay on pitch in one of the most punishing of the notoriously difficult Mozart arias was admirable. Except for a couple of inordinately high grace notes, she was right on target. Ms. Leonard has time to develop some heft to her voice, but she has thus far been well-cast in such ingénue roles as Zerlina. The writing is highly emotional in this scene — originally it serves as the declaration of eternal fidelity of Idomeneo’s son Idamante — yet someone seemed to have made a conscious decision for Ms. Leonard to eschew any sense of high drama.

The piano accompaniment was deftly handled by another master’s graduate, the Parisian Benedicte Jourdois. She demonstrated a protean sense of style, morphing from delicate Mozartean adagio touch to thunderous drama as required. We were all enriched by this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear a work the way it was intended.

Finally, it was the woodwind and percussion students who dazzled with a delightfully subtle palette of color in Maurice Ravel’s Suite from “Mother Goose.” Especially notable was the clarity and sparkle of the Empress of the Pagodas section. And a piece that all students love to perform, the second suite from Daphnis et Chloé, rounded out the program.

Lorin Maazel recently offered his unsolicited opinion as to who should succeed him at the New York Philharmonic. Allow me to follow suit. The orchestra’s management could — and probably will — do a lot worse than James DePreist. He is a commanding leader, an experienced teacher, and a proven ensemble-builder. But he has probably no chance, as the board will undoubtedly go for the security of a big celebrity name. Besides, at 70, he is a little too young to conduct the Philharmonic.