Led by Jukka-Pekka Saraste, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra performs two symphonies by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Having as a student absorbed the music of Webern, Scriabin and the new Polish school, in the 1970s Silvestrov moved away from avant-garde techniques and became increasingly involved with the idiom of 19th-century song. To date, Silvestrov has composed seven symphonies. Considered by some to be his masterpiece, Symphony No. 5 has been described as an epilogue inspired by the music of late Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler.