Listening recently to a performance of Mozart's E flat piano concerto K271, I thought it might be worth thinking about those composers' works which represented a sort of 'coming of age', a significant break from the works of their youth and a move to something richer and deeper. I thought it might be possible to isolate a work, or a group of works, which revealed such a change. Of course this is an arbitrary (and some might say pointless) exercise to a certain extent, as it isn't often possible to locate abrupt changes in people's life and work. I'm sure there are composers where it is hard to pin down such breaks: did Brahms, for instance, ever have a youth? 
And it's not so much concerned with questions of quality (some youthful works might be much better than some mature ones), more of style and character. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what people here might identify as 'coming of age' works for the composers they are particularly interested in.
For me the Mozart concerto is such a work, as it seems to me to represent a real change in style from what had gone before - a world away from the earlier 'galant' piano concertos and containing a slow movement of much greater depth than any he had written previously. Before this concerto few of his works had, imo, advanced beyond the merely entertaining (however well-written, e.g. the 29th symphony and the violin concertos), but after it there seems to be an enriching of the material in almost all genres: piano sonatas, symphonies, concertos, even the lighter serenades and divertimenti - compare the Divertimento K334 with the earlier teenage divertimenti for instance.
With Schubert, despite his phenomenal facility and prolific output, I would put the change to a mature style relatively late, around the period of the Unfinished Symphony in 1822. This work is radically different from the first six symphonies, and seems to me to herald a change in Schubert's style in a number of genres: the Wanderer Fantasy, the sonata D784 and the Moments Musicaux are also of a different order from the earlier piano sonatas; the chamber music is darker, and the first of the great song-cycles is soon to appear.
Any thoughts?
And it's not so much concerned with questions of quality (some youthful works might be much better than some mature ones), more of style and character. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what people here might identify as 'coming of age' works for the composers they are particularly interested in.For me the Mozart concerto is such a work, as it seems to me to represent a real change in style from what had gone before - a world away from the earlier 'galant' piano concertos and containing a slow movement of much greater depth than any he had written previously. Before this concerto few of his works had, imo, advanced beyond the merely entertaining (however well-written, e.g. the 29th symphony and the violin concertos), but after it there seems to be an enriching of the material in almost all genres: piano sonatas, symphonies, concertos, even the lighter serenades and divertimenti - compare the Divertimento K334 with the earlier teenage divertimenti for instance.
With Schubert, despite his phenomenal facility and prolific output, I would put the change to a mature style relatively late, around the period of the Unfinished Symphony in 1822. This work is radically different from the first six symphonies, and seems to me to herald a change in Schubert's style in a number of genres: the Wanderer Fantasy, the sonata D784 and the Moments Musicaux are also of a different order from the earlier piano sonatas; the chamber music is darker, and the first of the great song-cycles is soon to appear.
Any thoughts?