Hearing music by Mozart among the offerings presented by the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center on Tuesday night took a bit of extra effort, since neither of the two concerts scheduled for that evening featured anything he wrote. The festival's resident orchestra, playing in Avery Fisher Hall, offered Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann, the last in a nod to his 200th birthday this year. Another 200th birthday, that of Chopin, was recognized in an after-hours recital by the Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski at the Kaplan Penthouse.

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Later, in another sold-out event, part of the Little Night Music series, the Kaplan Penthouse served as an appropriately intimate forum for Mr. Trpceski's intense, highly personal approach to Chopin's music. Opening with the four Op. 24 Mazurkas, he demonstrated a technique well suited to Chopin: muscular, clear and unfussy, with a firm grasp of chiaroscuro and an abundant capacity for invention.

As important, Mr. Trpceski left no doubt as to his temperamental affinity for Chopin's music. Within the wistful Op. 24 pieces, and even more in the Mazurka in A minor (Op. 17, No. 4) that followed, Mr. Trpceski offered sighing elongations, giggly tumbles and temperamental flashes, admirably serving Chopin's mix of the earthy and the ethereal.

Brighter and more affirmative, the three Op. 70 Waltzes brought out a more easeful elegance in Mr. Trpceski's playing. Intensity returned, redoubled, in a concluding group featuring the paired Nocturnes of Op. 32 and Op. 48. Mr. Trpceski proved himself a master of Chopin's subtle shock tactics, those sudden hollows and unsignaled sharp turns that leave you momentarily disoriented within Chopin's dreamy terrain.

Now and then you might have wished for just a shade more momentum; still, it was impossible to remain unswayed by Mr. Trpceski's careful consideration and thoroughness, which extended to his reversal of the order of the Op. 48 Nocturnes to give his recital a more heroic ending.

For his encore he offered Chopin's Waltz in A minor (Op. posth.), reveling once more in the composer's incomparable intermingling of sun and shade.