After opening its 2000 season Thursday with a performance by the time-honored Manhattan Transfer, the Festival at Sandpoint turned to classical music’s own time-honored favorite: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The Spokane Symphony and conductor Gary Sheldon showed that Mozart fits the North Idaho out-of-doors as easily as in the most elegant concert hall or opera house.

Mozart may even be better under the stars by the lake. Where else would you get to smile at the piping commentary of the resident family of ospreys - the festival’s unofficial mascots - on the serene delights of the slow movement of a Mozart piano concerto? In what great auditorium could you better sense the tenderness and foreboding mystery of the Andante in Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony as darkness descends on Memorial Field?

Sheldon, music director of the Marin Symphony, proved a good Mozart conductor, aiming for, and often achieving, a fine balance between the composer’s vigorous energy and his courtly refinement. Sheldon’s program achieved an interesting balance, too, between familiar masterpieces such as the Overture to “The Marriage of Figaro” and the “Jupiter” Symphony and less frequently performed works such as the “Serenata Notturna” and the Sinfonia Concertante for Winds (which may or may not be by Mozart).

Sheldon used the “Serenata Notturna” and the finale of the perhaps-by-Mozart Sinfonia Concertante to showcase the symphony’s principal string and wind players: the orchestra’s new principal string bassist Darryl Miyasato and its new principal clarinetist Chip Phillips. Both seem strong additions to the orchestra in their soloist roles as well as section leaders.

The evening’s greatest challenge for Sheldon and the orchestra was the “Jupiter” Symphony, with its astonishing profusion of melodic beauty and formal ingenuity - surprising compositional tricks behind every seemingly innocent pattern of notes. Sheldon produced a warmly romantic sound with his Spokane players, yet the music almost always had a high level of rhythmic energy.