LITTLE & GREAT

Masaaki Suzuki’s visits to Lahti are Events with a capital E. Now the Japanese maestro conducts two symphonies from each end of the Viennese classical period.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who stunned Europe even as a young boy, made his name with courtly pieces that celebrated the lightness of life. Then he produced his Symphony No. 25, which surprised everyone. The form and profundity of this minor-key symphony, which ventured into unprecedented territory, showed that the teenage sensation, only 17 years old, had already left the narrow confines of a child prodigy behind.

Franz Schubert, who earned his living by writing songs about love, struggled throughout his short life to gain respect as a symphonist. The last of his great works was not premiered until years after his death, and it took almost a century for its status as a landmark in the history of music to be acknowledged. The largest and most multi-faceted of Schubert’s symphonies, it aspires both to heavenly proportions and earthly pleasure, a holistic experience to which transcendental beauty is only the prelude.