Not only is this the Mozart year, but we’ve just wrapped up the Mozart weekend of the Mozart year. The Berlin Philharmonic, blissfully ignoring the time differences between Austria and New York, was touting the fact that they were presenting a concerto with Alfred Brendel at the very moment when Wolfie was born 250 years ago. Give me a break. We don’t even know where this guy is buried.

Having heard the Berliners twice last week, I opted instead on Friday evening for our own Philharmonic and their unfortunately named Magic of Mozart Festival. I have my problems with this orchestra, but have always been fond of its approach to Mozart. Once ensconced in a seat at Avery Fisher Hall, I was delighted to know I had made the right choice.

The main reason for the success of this evening was that music director Lorin Maazel left his hyphen at home: The music on the program was not composed by Mozart-Maazel but by Wolfgang himself. Mr. Maazel can be overwhelmingly fussy, but he was warm and generous on this occasion, allowing the small ensemble to breathe and develop its own flow for this middle-period music.

Four relatively short works were on the program and provided us with a snapshot from Salzburg of Mozart in his teens and 20s, just before his breakout years in Vienna. The Symphony No. 28 opened the festivities and was played buoyantly.

This is essentially a string orchestra piece – in fact, another reason for the excellence of this evening was the absence of the first chair trumpet and horn players – and the 30 or so chosen participants made the most of it. Playing was crisp but loving, never escalating above a well-disciplined mezzo forte. Mr. Maazel presided somewhat beatifically and seemed to enjoy not being called upon to do much heavy lifting. “Very nice” was the comment from the chatty dowager in the next row. I agreed.

For some years, I heard so many versions of the same Mozart Horn Concerto in E-flat major that I began to believe that it was the only one in the genre and was labeled as the “No. 3” only because of some vagary in the Kochel catalog. I am going through such a period now with the D major Violin Concerto, the No. 4.

This is indeed the most beautiful and popular of the quintet of works from the same Mozartean years. Its key signature is the most “violin friendly,” with the open strings comprising four of the seven notes of the scale. Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky all employed this key for their violin concertos. Even Alban Berg based the tone rows of his lovely piece “To the Memory of an Angel” on the D major scale.

Associate concertmaster Sheryl Staples was given the honor of the solo role, and she was nothing short of brilliant. She navigated these delightful melodies with seeming ease and an unobtrusive but insistent vibrato. Mr. Maazel, a violinist himself, provided solid support and a beaming visage of appreciation. Everyone was in sync for a change, and the maestro knew it. Maybe they just all got along because it was a birthday party. I could envision them having cake together after the show.

After a thrilling “Haffner” symphony, the group presented a real rarity: the “Coronation” Mass in C major, which despite its soubriquet was not written for any particular historical event. This concert was the 14,205th for the Philharmonic, yet this was the band’s first ever mounting of this sensitive missa brevis.

Celena Shafer, Joyce DiDonato, John Tessier, Nathan Berg, and the Westminster Symphonic Choir supplied the vocal power. It was interesting to speculate how Mozart’s life would have progressed had he stayed in Salzburg. Would he have become a religious composer? Instead, the bright lights of Vienna beckoned, and he ended up as, well, Mozart.

***

Mozart loved the clarinet. It was a brand-new instrument in his lifetime, first utilized in orchestral music by the Benda family in Mannheim. Wolfgang wrote ecstatically to his father about this new, breathy sonority; late in life, he fashioned many beautiful pieces to take advantage of its unique timbre. In addition to featuring it as an obbligato instrument in his mature operas, he also composed three chamber works – the “Kegelstatt” trio for clarinet, viola, and piano, the Clarinet Concerto and the Clarinet Quintet – that are among the most exquisite in the entire repertoire.

On Saturday evening at the 92nd Street Y, Sabine Meyer and the Tokyo String Quartet performed the Clarinet Quintet. Hearing this sublime piece was just the tonic to cure me of my boredom with all this Mozart anniversary stuff.

Ms. Meyer is most famous for having been the first woman to play in the Berlin Philharmonic, and is now a soloist in great demand. I remember a concert she gave with Gidon Kremer a few seasons ago that was so crystalline in interpretation that I first realized why Bela Bartok called his trio for clarinet, violin, and piano “Contrasts.”

Ms. Meyer was note-perfect in this performance; more important, he produced a tone that was reminiscent of the old masters of this instrument, who performed on clarinets made entirely of wood. It was that kind of natural sound that must have first attracted Mozart. It would be a bit much to state that the string quartet – Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda, violins; Kazuhide Isomura, viola; Clive Greensmith, cello – was also flawless in its accuracy, but the musicians certainly sounded more together than they have for the last few years (the two non-Japanese players are relatively new to the group).

The outer movements (Allegro and Allegretto) were jaunty and the minuet was lighter than air. But the really impressive performance was that of the Larghetto, where Ms. Meyer seemed to be a creature that had no need to breathe, her notes growing organically out of each other and emerging like incandescent flames from the dying embers of those of her mates. Mozart makes much of the similarities in sounds between viola and clarinet – a pattern that would also be exploited by Brahms – and, on this night, they blended superbly. This movement was simply heavenly.

Mr. Beaver sat out the reading of the Quartet for oboe and strings, K. 370. Alexei Ogrintchouk is only in his 20s, but recently he landed the dream job of all oboists, being named as the first chair of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw by the new music director, Mariss Jansons. When next we hear the “Kindertotenlieder” or the Brahms Violin Concerto performed by the world’s greatest orchestra, this young artist will be offering the oboe solos.

This evening, he impressed with a reading filled with character. Mr. Ogrintchouk is young and bold enough to play Mozart in a decidedly raucous manner, a little on the buffoonish or even scatological side when indicated in the music. This is exactly the way the composer wrote the part, but there are few double-reed players who follow through this convincingly. He also exhibited a fine singing tone in the Adagio; it seems he will do well in the Netherlands.

On its own, the foursome in residence produced a solid “Prussian” Quartet, K. 589 that indicates that some of their recent troubles may be over. Nothing like a little Mozart to put everything right.

The Y is closed on Friday night in observance of the Sabbath and had to postpone its birthday bash until Saturday evening. But for those of us who celebrated on both Friday and Saturday, we were partying like it was 1756.