From the streets of Salzburg to the opera houses of Prague, to special programming on National Public Radio and Disney, Mozart lovers around the world toasted in jubilation to his 250th birthday last Friday.

And beneath the warm skylights of Foellinger Great Hall in the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, the University Symphony Orchestra took part in the celebration with its annual all-Mozart concert. This particular year held more significance, and nearly 1,000 people attended.

“Every place in the world is celebrating Mozart today,” said Music Director and Conductor Donald Schleicher. “So it’s just an organic part of life for a classical musician to do a Mozart concert on his birthday – in particular his 250th.”

Under the baton of graduate student conductor David Anderson, the program began with the Overture from Abduction from the Seraglio, a dynamic, spirited piece with Turkish-like percussion.

Tzu-Shan Lin, doctoral student and concertmaster for the first half of the program, recalled the long periods spent rehearsing the first few bars of the Overture.

“It’s not an easy piece,” Lin said. “There’s purity and beauty in his music, and it’s so simple but when you play it, it’s very difficult.”

After the overture special guest Timothy Ehlen performed the stormy and poignant Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor with the orchestra.

Ehlen, who has an extensive performance history and a solo album, is an assistant professor of piano at the University.

“I love the variety of expression and the musical intelligence,” said Ehlen on Mozart’s piano concertos. “The ideas are so refined and so high class, and still it’s so much fun to play.”

After a brief intermission, where scores of people lined up backstage to congratulate Ehlen on his performance, conductor Schleicher took up the podium for part two of the program.

Opening the second half was special guest William Heiles, professor of music and chair of the piano division at the University. He performed the intensely emotional and fluid Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor.

The orchestra closed out the program on a bright, festive note with Symphony No. 35 in D Major.

Backstage after the concert, Schleicher explained what he deemed to be the true genius of Mozart. In Mozart’s opera Cosi fan tutte, the character Fiordiligi sings of her determination to stay steady as a rock and not to give in to temptations. Yet while she sings “steady as a rock” the orchestra plays a cascade of notes that tumble downwards.

“(Mozart’s) tricky,” said Schleicher. “He’s always got something to say that no one else has ever thought of before … You can study him your entire life and you’ll never find all of them. He was a real prodigy, a real genius.”

And in the words of the “Einstein of music” himself, as Schleicher dubbed Mozart – “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love – that is the soul of genius.”