Mostly Mozart/Manze, Hough, Avery Fisher Hall, New York

The Mostly Mozart programme on Tuesday turned out to be a Mendelssohn-Mozart mélange, and a rather good one at that.

Only rather? Well, the ad hoc orchestra was once again challenged by the need to maintain high spirits amid technical dips. Also, Andrew Manze, the gutsy Briton making his debut on the podium, chose to begin the festivities with an odd musical mongrel.

Still, there was general cause for cheer. And when it came to the soloist, Stephen Hough, there was general cause for awe.

Manze, 47, is a conductor/violinist/scholar who makes frequent guest appearances with major European – if not American – orchestras. His permanent job at the moment entails leadership of the Helsingborg Symphony in Sweden. More prominent positions should loom in his future. He impressed on this occasion with his no-nonsense authority, his interpretive warmth and reluctance to dawdle over too familiar impulses.

For a calling card he chose the baroque flourishes of Bach’s D-major Suite, No. 3, as romanticised by Mendelssohn and subsequently edited by Ferdinand David. This is, to say the least, a jolting hybrid, but Manze presented it with nearly persuasive gusto. Ruggero Allifranchini, the resident concertmaster, played the popular “Air on the G String” – here a solo – suavely.

Hough turned the night into something of a personal marathon. It began with a pre-concert recital that reportedly featured his own piano sonata, Broken Branches. Attentively accompanied by Manze, he flashed his fiery way through the Mendelssohn G-minor Concerto, his speedy impetuosity possibly justified by the “con fuoco” marking of the opening movement. Ever virtuosic, he sustained clarity and poise, keeping every hemidemisemiquaver in place and focusing lyrical contrasts without tempo distortions. Finally, after wiping his perspiration with a handy scarlet hanky, he caressed the sentiment of an acutely simple encore, Schumann’s Träumerei.

After the interval, Manze did his considerable best to make Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony sound fresh, even urgent. Despite an instrumental blemish here and a blurred nuance there, the maestro enforced a mostly memorable performance.

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